


City of Knives

by Siavahda



Series: Runed [3]
Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Clary is a Lewis, F/F, Faeries - Freeform, Horror, Insanity, It Gets Worse, M/M, Mental Instability, Non-Human Genitalia, Simon is a Fray, Unicorns, singer!Simon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-22 16:35:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 138,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3735940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siavahda/pseuds/Siavahda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Tantō?”</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“Kris?”</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“Shuriken?”</p><p>Simon paused in the act of fastening his Shadowhunter belt. “What in the Time Lords’ names am I going to need throwing stars for?”</p><p>Jace gave him a superior look. “It’s always best to be prepared.”</p><p>“That’s why I carry condoms, not freaking ninja stars!”</p><p>Someone is murdering Downworlder children, the Clave's Inquisitor wants Jace stripped of his runes, and the Spiral Court of the warlocks is descending on New York. But Simon has bigger problems. A month ago he opened the Pandora's box in his soul to save Jace's life; now it won't close, and the darkness he set free is starting to take him over. With demons flocking to the city and his mind coming apart at the seams, Simon is going to need his friends more than ever.</p><p>Because the descent into Hell is easy. It's getting out alive that's the hard part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> I swore I would not keep you guys waiting a year for the next installment, so here it is! This is going to be a dark one, people. You have been warned. I will post trigger warnings in the chapter notes where appropriate so please make sure to check them before you read each chapter if you know you have triggers.
> 
>  **Trigger Warnings for the prologue:** human sacrifice/murder, specifically murder of a young person, mercy-killing, physical abuse.
> 
> On a related note, I'm on the market for a beta again! I'm looking for someone in a European timezone with regular internet access and knowledge of canon (you have to have read at least books 1-5 of TMI!), preferably somebody who loves world-building and discussing/building/developing ideas and plots. I need a soundboard for ideas and plotting more than I need someone to check my grammar, but also someone who will tell me when my prose is getting too purple or convoluted!
> 
> If you're interested, drop me a message saying why you're interested and why you think you'd be a good beta at my tumblr, siavahdainthemoon, or send a pm to my account (Siavahda) on fanfic dot net. Anon messages on tumblr (but not ff dot net) are fine so long as you provide an email address so I can message you back privately. And don't forget to mention three of your favourite books!
> 
> Now, on with the fic! ARE YOU EXCITED? I AM EXCITED.

To any mundanes passing by, the abandoned hospital of the Brooklyn Naval Yard was a miracle of architecture—because it really shouldn’t have been standing. Peeling paint and rotten boards were just barely visible beneath the riotous vines and overgrowth, and if anyone had stopped to peer through the doors just barely clinging to their hinges, they would have glimpsed a kingdom of dust and dirt, scattered with dead leaves and puddles of stagnant water, foul with the scent of animal urine. That it had not yet been demolished was surely some clerical oversight; that it had not collapsed under the weight of its own disrepair was nothing short of a minor miracle.

If they had possessed some glimmer of the Sight, however, they would have seen something very different.

Stripped of the glamour of dust and dirt, the entrance hall gleamed beneath a chandelier of witchlight and crystal, the white marble floor reflecting the light like a mirror. Far from containing the remains of a hospital’s reception, the hall featured a curved double staircase leading to the upper floors, carpeted in white and pale grey, framed by a railing of gracefully wrought silver. A fine table stood between the two staircases, bearing up a flower arrangement of hydrangeas, phalaenopsis orchids, and calla lilies.

A young man stood by the table, staring sightlessly at the flowers. The light of the chandelier pulled a blue gleam from his dark hair, like that of a raven’s wing. In his _voyance_ -Marked hand he twirled a slender stem of forget-me-not, idly, as if he had forgotten it.

A scream tore through the house, a thin, keening wail.

The young man sighed, set the forget-me-nots down on the table, and entered the door beneath the left-hand stair.

Witchlight torches illuminated the spiral staircase down into the darkness beneath the house. Another scream, more piercing than the last, echoed off the stone before he reached the subterranean floor. A mundane would not have been able to hear, beneath the scream, another voice chanting; a mundane would not have recognised, nor understood, the demonic language being spoken.

_“Ajarbex naintenor mrzkes dorzekst…”_

The young man pushed open another door.

The room revealed was stone, but for a wide circle of bare earth in the middle of the floor. The centrepiece was an elaborate edifice of silver and _adamas_ , a low table of woven metal and crystal raised just inches from the ground. At another time, in another place, it would have been a beautiful object—but now it was a thing of horror, awash with the blood of the young warlock bound to it, the source of the screams. The teenaged Downworlder struggled like a moth pinned to a corkboard, his wings—black and ribbed, the wings of a bat—staked down by silver spikes into the dirt, his wrists charred and smoking with the Infernal runes Marked there to bind his magic. His screams dissolved into hoarse, choking sobs as the door opened, as he tried unsuccessfully to curl away from the pain.

Ignoring both his victim and the new arrival, the ‘priest’ of this macabre ritual continued to chant, the long spill of his hair shining the same silver as the sword in his rune-Marked hands. Its blade dripped the warlock’s blood back onto the boy’s ruined chest.

_“Ssnakris zesth jednesk naitensk…”_

Careful not to disturb the elaborate sigils painted and etched into the floor—a twisted amalgamation of Celestial and Infernal Marks, all of them shimmering in the corner of the eye, seeming to shift and quiver like repelling magnets but chained in place as surely as the warlock—the dark-haired young man crossed the room and took up position in the corner. His face was impassive, remained impassive as blue flames caught where the warlock’s blood met the earth, as the runes around the room began to burn.

_“Morozon jhaided, extrinza…”_

“Please,” the warlock begged, catching sight of him, seeing him through the glaze of tears and agony, “please help me!”

The young Shadowhunter watched, but said nothing and did not move, even as the boy broke down into helpless, despairing sobbing again. Regardless of their real age few warlocks looked older than twenty-five, but since the ritual called for a child this one must actually be as young as he looked—somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, only a touch younger than his one-man audience. He was almost certainly the newest and best-loved treasure of the Spiral Court, who cherished their children above all things, even more than did the fey. He had probably never felt any serious pain before tonight, and now it was the last thing he would ever know.

There was no help to give. He would not live long enough to see the sky even if the dark-haired Shadowhunter answered the plea in his eyes and rescued him from this. His injuries were too great.

It was almost over.

The chant reached its crescendo, every word ringing with triumph. The young Shadowhunter met the despairing agony in the child’s eyes and did not look away, did not flinch as the room exploded with azure fire, a detonation of searing, electrifying power from the very heart of the world. He bore still, silent witness as Valentine’s long seraph blade directed the flames to coalesce, gathering them together in a summer-sky firestorm; watched without quailing as the sword came down and drove through the boy’s broken torso into the blood-soaked earth beneath the altar, as the whirlwind of fire plunged down after it and the teenager ripped himself to pieces around one final scream, his blood staining the flames first crimson and then darkest black. It went on and on, that scream, on and on until the roar of the fires drowned it out, the sound of a thousand storms tearing the boy’s body apart between them, jet flames spilling out of his mouth and eyes and from beneath his fingernails, ribs cracking and wrists breaking like toys with the violence of his frenzied convulsions, a channel for forces that could not be channelled—

Until the room was drowned in ebony, no blue remaining to mitigate the dark horror of the shadow-lit sacrifice, the un-light shining black nightmares on the spilled blood and the boy’s pain-struck eyes and Valentine’s exultant face—

And abruptly was gone. The seraph blade exploded, shards of splintered _adamas_ flying to all corners as the flames vanished, snuffed out like a capped candle; without warning there was only the light of the witchlight lamps, the hellish scene replaced by bare stone walls and a circle of bloodstained dirt, the runes on the floor reduced to ashy scorch-marks. 

The young Shadowhunter was kneeling beside the altar, and the warlock boy was dead.

The sudden silence rang.

“Get up,” Valentine ordered. His voice was cold as Sheol.

Smoothly, the young man rose, leaving his dagger where it lay sheathed in the warlock’s heart. His face was cool and composed as he stood with his hands clasped behind his back.

The blow Valentine struck him sent him sprawling to the bloody floor, the sound of it lingering like a whipcrack on the still air. 

“Every moment of his pain strengthened the spell,” Valentine said. “Your interference cost me that strength. When you have cleaned up this mess, you will pay it back to me, and perhaps next time, you will remember its price.” There was blood on his face, where a piece of his broken blade had flown and cut him; it was almost black against his skin. “The spell was already complete; you only kept it from being as strong as it might have been. What did you hope to gain?”

The young man said nothing. His cheek was already beginning to bruise.

“Bring me the whip,” Valentine said, “when you are done.” He left the room without a backwards glance for either boy, the dead or the silent.

Only when the door was closed did the dark-haired Shadowhunter push himself upright. For a moment he held himself still, listening for the older man’s heartbeat, making sure Valentine was truly gone and not waiting in the corridor outside. When he was certain, he went to stand beside the body of the teenager, dropping to one knee beside it.

Carefully, with the air of someone performing a foreign ritual, he closed the boy’s eyes. _“Ave atque vale,”_ he whispered; _hail and farewell,_ the Shadowhunter valediction to the honoured dead. The ancient Latin words sounded strange from his lips, unfamiliar; a platitude he had never mouthed before.

He paused, letting the words hang like snowflakes in the air; cold, and useless, and all too brief. And then they were gone, and he rose to fetch what cleaning supplies he would need to scrub the blood from the floor, and from his hands.

* * *

NOTES

In the language of flowers, forget-me-nots symbolise true love and memories.

Sheol is a Hebrew name for Hell, or possibly one of several Hells.


	2. Signed in Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Hope you're ready to hit the ground running!
> 
> Just to let you all know, I have found a wonderful new beta! Her name is Courtland and she is utterly fabulous. She was instrumental in making this chapter work, so send her loads of virtual hugs! 
> 
> Also, I made a small mistake in the prologue, saying Valentine had the Mortal Sword. That was a terrible typo, and he does not have the Sword. 
> 
> Now, onwards!

“Stele?”

“Yep.”

“Simiel?”

“When do I not have Simiel?”

“Boot knife?”

“That ballistic dagger thing Izzy gave me.”

“Tantō?”

“Yep.”

“Kris?”

“Yep.”

“Shuriken?”

Simon paused in the act of fastening his Shadowhunter belt. “What in the Time Lords’ names am I going to need throwing stars for?”

Jace gave him a superior look. “It’s always best to be prepared.”

“That’s why I carry condoms, not freaking ninja stars!”

With a smirk, Jace withdrew three razor-edged _x_ s from his own belt, crossed over to Simon, and kissed him. “Maybe if you’re very lucky,” he murmured, slipping the shuriken into one of Simon’s many pockets, “you’ll need both.”

“Not at the same time, I hope.” Simon barely knew what he was saying, the low, hot purr of his boyfriend’s voice echoing down his spine, pooling molten and gold in the pit of his stomach. He caught his hand around the back of Jace’s neck and pulled him in for another, longer kiss, loving the shiver that ran under his fingers as it raced down Jace’s back. “Only you would look forward to any situation that called for ninja stars,” he said when they parted, trying for dry but unable to keep the fondness from his voice.

Jace just grinned at him. “I hear that mundane high schools are terrifying places,” he said unrepentantly. “Worse than any circle of Hell. Cheerleaders, algebra, Civil War history… Who knows what kind of monsters you’ll face?”

The thin veneer of light-heartedness wasn’t quite enough to hide the glint of real worry at the back of Jace’s eyes. Simon made himself smile, trying to be reassuring. He could guess what it cost Jace to let him go today—to a mundane high school, surrounded by people who couldn’t help fend off a demon attack even if they could see the monsters coming—which they couldn’t.

Jace stepped back, a blasé mask snapping down over his concern. “Maybe you just shouldn’t go,” he said lightly. “It’s not as if any of that stuff matters. You could catch up on your training.”

“All I’ve been doing for two weeks is train,” Simon said—but gently. “You’ve got to let me out of your sight eventually, you know.”

“You’re a decade behind,” Jace said, ignoring that last part. “Two weeks is nothing. It’ll be years before I can trust you out on your own; how could I ever show my face at Taki’s again if you mixed up a barghest and a werewolf? Or—”

_“Jace.”_

Jace shut up. His knuckles had gone white, Simon noticed, before Jace shoved his hands in his pockets.

“There’s been no demons sighted for two weeks,” Simon said quietly. “That’s what you told me. Right? Not since Abigor.”

“Simon—”

“Nobody is going to try and kill me in Computer Sciences,” Simon continued firmly. “The Downworlders don’t care about me—and they’re all on best behaviour because of the Accords next month anyway—and we scared all the demons away. I’ll be _fine.”_

“It’s not normal,” Jace said tightly, “for the city to be this quiet. They could be planning something, building up to something—Abigor was after _you_ , Simon, you in particular. Demons don’t do that.”

“Well, if they show up in gym class, my angel will smite them,” Simon pointed out. “And the International Space Station will get a free light show again. They might even send me a thank-you note; I bet it gets really boring, the view from up there—”

Jace didn’t smile. “If you want to go to school so badly, we could send you to the Academy in Idris. They’d welcome you.”

 _And you’d be safe there._ The words hovered between them, heavy and unyielding.

“I really don’t think they would, you know,” Simon said lightly. _We’ve been over this, Jace. Over it and over it._ Was this how Jace had felt, when Simon had kept trying to convince him not to take his oath to the Clave? “Not once they met me.”

Jace made a dismissive gesture. “You’re a pureblood, Morgenstern and Fairchild— _and_ the son of a runecaster. There’s almost nothing you could do that would make them turn you away. Alec’s already had four letters from the Headmaster asking why we haven’t enrolled you yet.”

Simon blinked. “You didn’t tell me that.”

Jace raised one golden eyebrow. “Would it have made a difference?”

No, it wouldn’t have. Jace and his siblings had explained the Academy to Simon weeks ago, both in an attempt to whisk Simon out of reach of any more demonic assassination attempts and in the hopes of finding someone on the staff who could better understand Simon’s…unique powers. But it was a military school in the strictest sense; no art or literature classes, no sciences or computer labs—not even any maths. Only martial arts and weaponry, tactics and runes, demonology and Downworlder identification—almost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Because why would a Shadowhunter need to know how many planets there were in the solar system, or who Shakespeare was?

They did, Jace had stressed, have music classes. Weirdly enough, Simon hadn’t particularly cared.

“No,” Simon said aloud, although the silence had already made his point for him. “It doesn’t. Because I don’t want to grow up to be a Shadowhunter, Jace. And if I want a place in the Light World—” Jace twitched, the way he always did when Simon used the term he’d coined to replace the derogatory implications of _mundane world_ , but Simon told himself it was a smaller twitch than it had been a week ago, “—then I have to go to a Light World school. It’s not complicated.”

“It’s also not _safe,”_ Jace said—but quietly, a low mutter that Simon could pretend not to hear if he chose.

He didn’t choose. “It’s perfectly safe,” he corrected, gently. “And I’ll have Clary with me.”

“She’s not a Shadowhunter.”

“Maybe not, but it wasn’t a Shadowhunter who saved our asses from Abbadon,” Simon reminded him. “And even Izzy is jealous of Buffy.”

“Which is still a ridiculous name for a blade.” But Jace seemed ever so slightly mollified. As a mundane _(Light Worlder,_ Simon reminded his brain firmly) Clary couldn’t drop into Shadowhunter battle-trance or use runes, but that didn’t disqualify her from learning how to handle herself in a fight. If anything, she’d dived into the lessons far more fiercely than Simon, who was still uneasy about the bloodlust that took him over in battle, and the dreams he kept having of blood and slaughter—dreams that ought to have been nightmares, but weren’t. 

“It is an awesome name, and your pettiness does not disguise your envy nearly as well as you think it does.” Simon pulled on his school blazer, checking the mirror to be sure none of his weapons showed. St Xavier’s was not the kind of school equipped with metal detectors at every door, but he suspected they would take a very dim view of his personal armoury if they found it. All things considered, he would rather avoid trying to explain that his incestuous lover was worried about him being attacked by demons. _‘He wouldn’t let me out of the house without them, sir…’_ “Now, are you going to brood, or can I get a kiss goodbye?”

Jace slipped closer without hesitation, but there was a desperate edge to the kiss, a sharp taste of not-quite-fear on his tongue. He was resigned, not reassured. “Call me between classes,” he murmured. The command was almost a plea. “I’ll pick you up at four.”

 _Yes, mom._ Simon wasn’t cruel enough to say it, especially since he wasn’t nearly as blasé about the risks as he wanted Jace to think. “I’ll be fine,” he promised.

Jace kissed the corner of his lips. “You’d better be.”

*

Clary was waiting on the sidewalk by the time Jace and Simon reached the front door of the Institute. It was only the slight bulge of Buffy at her pocket that kept Jace from insisting on a last-minute escort to their classroom doors—and he was still contemplating tailing them from the rooftops just to keep an eye on them when a pang came from Alec.

Reminding himself for the thousandth time that Simon’s angel would keep him safer than Jace ever could, Jace went to find his _parabatai_.

At this hour, most Shadowhunters were asleep, recovering from a night of patrolling and hoarding energy for the next. It was only Simon’s influence that Jace and his siblings were as diurnal as they were, but it was still not normal to find Alec in the library with the sun this new in the sky.

Or rather, it was becoming distressingly normal, and it had to stop.

“You should be asleep,” Jace said, finding Alec among the northern-most shelves. His _parabatai_ must have come here right after they got back last night, not even pausing to change clothes before hitting the books; he was still wearing the dragon-hide trousers of his hunting gear, and twin throwing daggers gleamed in his wrist-sheathes. “Even the sun’s complaining about having to get up this early.”

“Doesn’t help.” A wave of resigned exhaustion came through the bond, and Jace tried not to let his worry bleed through. Alec had always been pale, his creamy skin only making his blue eyes and dark hair more strikingly lovely—but lately he’d started to look like something made of paper, fragile and spectral. His eyes were darker than ever, but now the sapphire-blue was offset by the violet circles in the hollows beneath. The _si_ _̱_ _mádi angélou_ , the silvery mark Simon’s angel had left on Alec’s right palm, was hidden beneath the fingerless gloves Alec hadn’t taken off for weeks, but Jace glanced towards it anyway, automatically.

It was what had started all this, after all, although Jace couldn’t be sure if it was the cause or just a herald for what was wrong with Alec.

Between the half-dozen books spread out on the table, Alec’s phone lay like a dead thing. Jace picked it up absently. “You’ve still got to try,” he said. “Your body needs to rest.”

“I ‘rest’ all Fallen-damned day, and just wake up more tired,” Alec snapped, a rare surge of hot emotion snarling through their link—scorchingly reassuring, compared to the feeling of wet ashes that was nearly all Alec could manage lately.

And then it was gone, as suddenly as it had flared. Jace had to bite his tongue to stop himself from yelling for it to come back.

Alec slumped in the chair. “He’s not answering his phone.”

Jace blinked once. “Magnus?” he guessed.

“He said he had a late—early?—business meeting, and I could call him after six if I was up. But he’s not answering.” Alec’s worry was a thick, slow thing, as if it had to fight its way through quicksand to reach a place where Alec could register it. “He always answers, when he’s said I can call.”

Carefully, Jace put the phone down on one of the demonology texts. It was open to a graphic illustration of a manticore demon feeding on a human woman. “He probably just fell asleep before he meant to.”

It seemed to take a long time for Alec to nod acknowledgement. “Yeah. It’s nothing.” But his quiet words rang hollow, and a dull, miserable ache lodged in his throat like a stone—Jace felt the ghost of it behind his own Adam’s apple.

He didn’t know what to do.

Before he was forced to decide, a sound like a struck gong reverberated through the bookshelves; not the slightly alarming _BOOM_ that warned of a Downworlder at the door, but a heavy, regal noise announcing the arrival of fellow Shadowhunters. At this hour, the door-spells would not have rung in any bedrooms but that of the Head of the Institute, but every other room in the building would have heard; the kitchen, the training hall, the infirmary and greenhouses…

The library.

As one, Jace and Alec glanced at each other, mirroring identical frowns of wary confusion. The thought flashed between them like a quarrel from a crossbow: _the Inquisitor?_

Without needing to exchange a word aloud, they both went to see who had come, Alec snatching his phone from the table as he passed.

*

“Alec! Jace!”

It was not the Inquisitor.

Jace stopped at the head of the stairs. Beside him, Alec lit up, a small burst of surprised delight burning through the fog of his apathy. “Max!” He took the rest of the stairs in a rush and scooped up his little brother, effortlessly lifting and whirling the eight-year-old through the air. “You got so big!”

“Did not! We were only gone a month!”

“One and a half,” his mother corrected, pushing back the hood of her double-breasted coat. The motion let free the long plait of her hair, falling like an ebony rope almost to her waist. Only the gleam of silver razors woven into the braid differentiated it from the black of her coat. “That is not suitable conduct for an Acting Head, Alexander.”

As swiftly as it had come, Alec’s pleasure was snuffed out; Jace saw him stiffen, and lower Max back to the floor. “Yes, mother.”

“He’s not Acting Head,” Jace pointed out, descending the stairs. “You’re back. The paperwork is once again your responsibility.” He paused. “You have my condolences.”

He’d expected her to laugh. Instead she flicked a single glance at him, like a thrown blade of blue ice, and looked away.

“I think Isabelle is asleep,” Alec was telling Robert—his father, _their_ father for the last eight years. Jace clung to the fact, even as he suddenly realised that Alec was of a height with Robert now, was maybe even a fraction taller. When had that happened? “But I can wake her—she’ll be so happy to see you! We didn’t know you were coming back so soon—”

“And we wouldn’t have,” Maryse said sharply, “if the three of you hadn’t—”

She stopped herself, but Jace had recovered from the dagger she’d flung his way. “Hadn’t what, mother?”

She had the same blue eyes as Alec, but Jace had never seen Alec’s eyes so algid. “I am not your mother,” she said. “That has been made very clear to us all.”

Jace stared at her. Alec’s shock was a splash of cold water through the bond, but he said nothing, did nothing. In battle such a blow would have brought his _parabatai_ running with an arrow already nocked, distracting the enemy so Izzy could get to Jace, so Jace could get under cover. But there was no enemy here, no demon, no threat…

“Jace?” Max’s voice was small and fragile. He was clinging to Alec’s hand, his blue eyes gone wide and worried behind his glasses.

Before Jace could figure out how to reassure his little brother, Robert intervened. “We will discuss this later.” He gave Maryse a meaningful look. “Alexander, if you could take Maximillian to his room…Your mother and I need to talk to Janim.”

Alec hesitated, glancing between them. He didn’t move.

“There’s no point trying to keep him out of it,” Jace said. A sick chill was spreading through his veins, a lump of dirty ice growing in the pit of his stomach. “Whatever you say to me, he’ll hear.”

“Are you mad at Jace?” Max asked. “Why are you mad at Jace?”

“Take him up to his room, Alexander,” Maryse ordered.

“I don’t want to go!” Max burst out. “I don’t want you to be mad at Jace!”

“Maximillian,” Robert began, “that is no way to speak to your mother—”

_BOOM!_

Everyone turned to look at the doors. They had already closed behind the Lightwoods; it was protocol to never leave them open—or unlocked. One hundred and eight rune-Marked bolts and locks bound the great doors in silver and steel and electrum, a vertical labyrinth of latches and clasps sealing the Institute against attack. To force them open would require destroying the walls around them, because they would not unbar for any but one of the Nephilim without their Master’s order.

“Well, go on, Alec,” Jace said lightly. “Let’s see who it is.”

Maryse glared at him and opened her mouth to speak—as Jace himself had pointed out, Alec was no longer Head of the Institute now their parents were home—but Alec, confused, raised his gloved hand without thinking, and the soft, clicking song of over a hundred locks sliding open answered him.

The doors swung open.

Jace had not been expecting anyone in particular, but he had definitely not been expecting the sight that greeted them. It was Magnus standing on the entrance stairs, and he had come not with the ducked head and bended knee Downworlders usually afforded Shadowhunter pride, but armoured and armed for war. He burned in the early morning light, limned by the still-rising sun behind him; it caught fire on the dozens of gems on his fingers, the rings of steel and gold at his ears, and the glitter-dusted kohl around his eyes. The long black coat he wore whipped and snarled around his legs, although there was no wind; and there were runes Marked on that coat, runes that did not belong to the Angel. When Jace caught a glimpse of their black-on-black gleam, they burned his eyes.

“Who’s that?” Max whispered, sounding awed.

No one answered him.

Robert drew himself up. “Magnus Bane.”

“Oh, so you _are_ here,” Magnus said. Jace had never heard a Downworlder speak to a Shadowhunter this way, with such heavy, undisguised sarcasm and a low undercurrent of blackest rage poisoning every word. “And here I was thinking the Nephilim must have abandoned New York outright.”

“Watch your tone, Downworlder.” Maryse stepped up beside her husband. “We abandoned nothing.”

“You left _children_ to guard this city!” Magnus hissed, and Jace realised that Magnus’ eyes were glazed as if with fever, that his skin was paler than it ought to be.

 _*Is he sick?*_ he asked Alec.

 _*He wasn’t when we talked yesterday…*_ Alec’s heart was a roiling storm of worry and shock, and no wonder; to have his Downworlder boyfriend here, in the same room as his parents…

“Our children are not like yours, warlock,” Maryse said coolly.

“No,” Magnus agreed, and if Maryse’s voice were cold then Magnus’ was colder, cold as ice. “They are never the ones who die.”

Robert placed a hand on his wife’s arm. “How can we help you, Bane?”

Magnus turned to the man, sharp and unforgiving. He seemed to have regained control of himself. “Your help is not requested or required, Nephilim. I am here to pass on a message, not to beg for the protection your Accords are _supposed_ to afford us.”

“The Accords protect your kind from yourselves and the Infernal you call kin,” Maryse said. “You should be grateful.”

Gold was supposed to be a warm colour, but the gaze Magnus turned on Jace’s mother made it cold. “One of my children was murdered last night,” he said, very quietly. “And you tell me I should be grateful?”

Across the room, Alec’s indrawn breath was a hiss; his disbelief tore through Jace like hail.

“Warlocks have no children,” Robert said, frowning.

“Every warlock child,” Magnus said, “is a child of mine. As they are the child of every other adult warlock.”

 _*I didn’t know that,*_ Jace said. _*Did you know that?*_

 _*No.*_ Alec did not seem relieved to hear that the dead child was not biologically Magnus’. It clearly didn’t make a difference to the warlock, which meant it made no practical difference at all.

“Last night, someone murdered our son and his guardian.” Magnus’ voice was rough. “Their names were Elias Ruth and Xia Dolor, and they died because you were not here. Because you care so little for your precious Accords, you left your job undone with only _children_ to mind it for you. So here is your message, Shadowhunters: the Spiral Court will be here by noon, and we will be hunting for justice. We will sign the Accords in the killer’s blood, or we will not sign at all.”

* * *

 

NOTES

 

A tantō is a Japanese blade that comes in a bunch of variations, usually to do with blade thickness, length and style of point. Simon’s is a modified Yoroi Toshi, which means the point is made for armour piercing, but his is dagger length, in the modern Americanised style. I’ve seen these punch through a car door—just the thing for hunting demons, plenty of which have thick hide or armour plating.

A kris is a wavy-bladed dagger or shortsword from Indonesia. Because of the wavy blade they do a ton of damage on the way in and out, for disabling opponents as quickly as possible. Again, a good characteristic for battling demons, no?

A barghest is a supernatural black dog, generally considered monstrous, sometimes as an omen of death.

108 is an important number in Hinduisim (there are 108 Maukhya Shivaganas) Buddhism (a Buddhist mala/rosary has 108 beads) and Judaism (108 is a multiple of 18, and contains the numbers 1 and 8 that compost 18, 18 being connected to the Hebrew word for ‘alive/living/life’).

In canon, Elias, the child warlock Valentine murders, isn’t given a surname. I chose ‘ruth’ for him, which as a noun means ‘compassion for the misery of another’. Xia Dolor is an OC, and her surname means ‘misery’. (I know it doesn’t fit the four-letter-word rule for warlock surnames, but I liked it so much I don’t care!)

A note on the Accords: in canon, the Accords are signed every 15 years and were signed most recently during City of Bones; reference is made to the fact that the Lightwood parents are in Alicante specifically for that signing. In Runed, this is not the case. The Accords are signed every _17_ years (to account for everyone’s ages, and the fact that my OCD does not like the number 15), and while they are due to be re-signed this year, that has not yet happened—it’s due to take place in about a month from the start of Knives. Robert and Maryse were in Alicante in preparation for that signing; there’s about three months of last-minute negotiations and celebrations leading up to the actual ceremony, and those two were attending.

A note on Max: yes, Max is eight in Runed, not ten. This is primarily because I have more experience with eight year olds than ten year olds and don’t want to write him badly!


	3. Cast Out Upon the Stones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge huge thank you to my wonderful beta Courtland, for being extra epic even when she was ill! She helped out ENORMOUSLY with this chapter, and you guys would not have gotten it so soon without her :D

Magnus did not stay to listen to the outraged protests of the Lightwood parents. While they were still demanding explanations and issuing furious censures, he gave them one last, disgusted look, turned on his heel in a flutter of raven-wing coat, and left.

Without once glancing Alec’s way.

“Bane. Bane!” Alec’s father roared. But he did not chase the warlock, and Magnus did not look back.

 _*You have to give him points for style,*_ Jace said.

Alec was numb. _Magnus has a son. His son is dead._ The two statements locked together like the twin heads of an amphisbaena, rolling endlessly around and round his mind. Had the redness of Magnus’ eyes been illness as Jace thought, or had the warlock been crying, mourning…?

Something in Alec gave way at the thought, twisted until it snapped and ripped a searing slash across his cement-heavy heart; wounded and raw and fierce and frantic, he let go of Max and forgot to be afraid as he bolted after his boyfriend. “Magnus! Wait!”

Forgot about his parents, standing right there and already focussed on the issue of the High Warlock; forgot to listen when poor Max called after him, confused and bereft; forgot to be afraid of what this might look like, running after a male Downworlder he wasn’t supposed to know—

Forgot to be afraid of anything except that Magnus was hurting—

 _*I’ll cover you,*_ Jace sent, just as if they were hunting, as if Alec were shifting positions to play the checkmate on another demon, another monster, and Alec didn’t think he was enough to slay Magnus’ pain but Raziel curse them all, he had to _try_ —

He hit the sidewalk at a run and raced after the beating wings of Magnus’ black coat. “Magnus!”

His boyfriend stopped, looked back as he had not for Robert and Maryse, for the Shadowhunters who ran this city’s Institute. Unabashed shock whipped across the grief in his face, blanked out the rage, and Alec felt it as a pang in his heart, that Magnus was surprised Alec would follow him.

_Of course I came, how could I not, did you really think I wouldn’t care?_

“What are you doing?” Magnus asked when Alec was closer. His voice was still thick and awful, but the anger had gone out of it, replaced with a horrible resignation. He was not angry at Alec, apparently. At least. 

Alec came to a halt in front of him. The distance between them felt like a river, like the Styx, and suddenly he realised he had no idea how to cross it, how to reach Magnus on the other side.

“I wanted…” Not to ask if Magnus were okay; he wouldn’t be, couldn’t be. “I wanted to tell you that I’ll wear mourning runes for him. For them both.”

Magnus stared at him. Alec didn’t know what to name the expression on his face. Up close, the warlock really did look ill; wan and sudoric, and his feline eyes were just a little bloodshot…

“If you don’t think it would be inappropriate,” Alec added quickly. “I know you must be angry with us, for… For everything.” Alec felt sick just thinking about it. _He_ had been the one in charge last night; Magnus’ son had been murdered on his watch. He’d long since had to accept the fact that he couldn’t save everyone; that for every demon sent back to Hell, another ten were killing mundanes somewhere else. But this was different. This was… “If you don’t want a Shadowhunter mourning with you, I’d—I’ll understand.”

“No,” Magnus said.

Despite what he’d said, Alec hadn’t really believed Magnus would reject him, would forbid him the Marks, and that quick _no_ thrust in like a knife and twisted, vicious, unforgiving. Just as quickly, Alec was disgusted with himself; this wasn’t about him, about them, and he had no right to be hurt by it. Magnus had good reasons for not wanting to taint his son’s mourning with Alec’s half-grief—Alec hadn’t even known the boy, or this Xia Dolor; what right did he have to—?

Magnus cleared his throat. “I mean, no, I wouldn’t mind,” he explained. He didn’t smile, but the river between them seemed a little narrower, a little shallower than it had been.

Alec nodded mutely. He had heard that mundanes apologised when they heard of someone’s death; for the first time, he thought he understood the bizarre custom. He was so sorry; sorry that he had let this happen in his canton, sorry that a child was dead, sorry that Magnus was in pain. “Call me,” he said lamely, “if there’s anything… If I can do anything. Or if you just want to talk. I’ll answer.”

Magnus’ eyes were golden mirrors, giving nothing away. “Thank you.” He looked as if he might say something more, but he caught himself.

Alec nodded again, feeling stupid and useless, still working on supressing his own shock and confusion. Magnus looked only a year or two older than Alec, but he had a son, had had a son, and hadn’t mentioned it, and were there more children—none of it mattered, he couldn’t believe he was even thinking about these things. Magnus’ son was _dead_. Which reminded him.

“We need to see where they died,” he said quietly. He couldn’t look Magnus in the eye. “To start tracking down the killer. Is there someone who can show us?”

Magnus was very still. When he spoke, his voice was level, almost toneless. “I can arrange for someone to show you where Xia was killed, yes.”

 _I’m sorry._ He braced himself. “And Elias?”

For a moment, he thought Magnus wasn’t going to answer. Then;

“That won’t be possible, I’m afraid.” He said it lightly, glitter over gore, and Alec almost flinched at the razors buried in every word. “We haven’t found his body yet.”

*

When Magnus left Alec walked slowly back to the Institute, thinking over their conversation, sifting the short exchange for implications, ramifications. Trying to focus on the practical aspects, instead of tying himself in knots over the emotions involved.

_‘Did you mean that about the Court? About not signing?’_

_‘I meant every word.’_

Would the warlocks really refuse to sign the Accords, if they—or the Shadowhunters—couldn’t find the killer? Alec had no real idea of what that would mean. The Accords had been in place for his entire life; even the short-lived Uprising had not managed to break the centuries-long chain of signings, pen put to paper every seventeen years since 1810. He didn’t know what it was like to live without the protection of that all-encompassing peace treaty. What would change? What would be affected?

He was still thinking it through when he found Jace waiting for him in the entrance hall.

“I told them that you’d really taken to the responsibility of being Acting Head,” his _parabatai_ said. He was lying sprawled on one of the couches, his legs draped over the arm. “And that it was thus automatic for you to go and get as much information about the situation as possible.” He sat up, swinging his feet around to lay flat on the floor. “They both agreed that you are a marvellously responsible administrator, and want to see us in the library as soon as possible.”

Alec stared at Jace a moment, trying to make sense of this. Pulling his thoughts away from Magnus left him feeling sluggish and slow to catch up, unable to process what Jace was saying. He understood enough, wordlessly, to know that their parents had not asked for Alec, but that Jace wanted him at that meeting nonetheless. “Why?”

Jace’s face was blank. “I suspect,” he said carefully, “that they want to discuss my father.”

“Now?” Alec bit back a flash of orange anger, saw-toothed and hot and disbelieving. _“Now?_ What difference does it make who your father is? We should be looking for whoever killed Elias and Xia, not—”

“And maybe that _is_ what they want to talk about. They didn’t _say_ it was about my hitherto-unsuspected parentage.” But beneath the skin Jace’s unease was obvious, and Alec knew Jace didn’t believe it. He didn’t need to catch the glimpses of Jace’s memories—his impressions of their parents’ reactions to him, before Magnus had torn the scene apart—to trust his _parabatai_ ’s instincts.

How could their parents possibly care about Jace’s father? And now, of all times?

“Fine. Come on.” Alec strode past the couch and towards the stairs. “But we’re waking Izzy first.”

If there was any chance he was going to have to do battle, he wanted their sister at his side.

*

Despite the chill twisting low in his chest, Jace had to suppress a smile as Maryse gave Izzy an annoyed glance. “You do not need to be here, Isabelle.”

“Why not?” Izzy demanded. “You’re not trying to kick Alec out.”

“Alexander is Janim’s _parabatai_ ,” their mother said. She sounded slightly strained. “You—”

Isabelle tossed her hair. “Actually,” she said, “we’re all three of us _agelai_ now. So I have every right to be here too.”

Maryse and Robert goggled at her. Jace had rarely seen either of them truly taken aback by anything, but they couldn’t have been more shocked—and more obviously appalled—if their only daughter had suddenly announced she was pregnant by a werewolf.

That was not a good sign.

Still, _*When did that happen?*_ Jace asked, a little bit amused. _*Did we all get very drunk and have the_ parabatai _Mark tattooed in some hideously inappropriate place?*_ He paused. _*Mine’s on the ass, isn’t it? I knew there had to be a reason I was sore.*_

 _*No, that was Simon,*_ Alec said smoothly, and his face remained perfectly composed as Jace choked.

At least their antics distracted their parents. Robert shot Jace an unimpressed look, and Maryse’s cool disapproval doused any last trace of scandalised humour.

He felt Alec’s wordless apology like a drop of rain.

“When did this take place?” Robert asked. He was a tall man, well-built and strong, with the aristocratic features typical of most pureblood Shadowhunters—the stamp of the Angel—and Jace had always thought of him as self-possessed. His voice was level now, but there was a tightness in it. “Who witnessed it?”

Isabelle did not falter, but then, Jace would have been surprised if she had. “The promise has been made,” she said coolly, with every bit of her mother’s glass-smooth poise. “That it has not yet been Marked is legally irrelevant.”

 _*Is that true?*_ Jace asked.

_*Yes. The legalities apply the moment you agree to bond; the ceremony just forges the connection and makes it binding.*_

Jace considered this. _*This wasn’t how I hoped she’d become our_ parabatai _.*_

Alec had nothing to say to that, but Jace felt the echo of his sadness. _*We won’t hold her to it.*_

Of course they wouldn’t. That certainty didn’t need to be verbalised.

Neither Maryse nor Robert looked particularly impressed, but there was no way to disprove Izzy’s claim and they knew it. “I would have preferred to have this conversation in private,” Maryse said, “but if you want an audience, Janim, then have it and welcome.” She was sitting at the desk Jace still thought of as Hodge’s, even though Hodge was gone; her husband stood at her right hand, just a little behind her chair, with his arms crossed over his chest. They were both watching Jace. “How long have you known?”

Jace didn’t pretend not to understand. “About as long as you have.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Robert said. “How could you possibly not know Valentine was your father?”

It struck him like a blow, and he felt it cut into Alec, distantly wondered if Izzy felt the same painful shock—because whatever Jace had expected, going over and over all the possible avenues this conversation might take in the dead of night, he had never thought that his parents might not believe him.

“How could I have known?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice level. He’d asked it of himself again and again since that night, but nothing in his childhood memories gave away the lies, not even in hindsight. “He told me our name was Wayland, and I had no reason to think he was lying. We lived in the Wayland manor.” Behind his back, his hands clenched into fists; a soft ripple of reassurance came from Alec in answer. For once, it didn’t help. “Has Max ever asked you to verify that he’s a Lightwood?”

“Don’t be facetious,” Maryse said.

“It isn’t facetious,” Izzy said suddenly. “It’s almost the same thing.” She tilted her head slightly. “Valentine kept Jace isolated. Before he came to live with us, he’d never met any other Shadowhunters; Valentine had total control over everything Jace knew. Max is in almost the same position; until he went to Alicante with you, the only people he knew were us and Hodge.” Her eyebrows rose in a pointed question. “Would you expect _him_ to disbelieve anything _you_ told us?”

“I would expect Max to know whether or not we were alive,” Maryse said.

Jace went cold.

“Jace watched him die,” Alec said. He was standing on Jace’s right, as Izzy was on his left. Like his siblings, Alec’s hands were clasped at the base of his spine, his stance set; unlike them, he had tied a white ribbon around his upper arm. Jace wasn’t sure where Alec had gotten it; Alec had sent Jace to wake their sister and had been wearing it when the three of them met again outside the library. “I’ve seen his memories, and it never looked staged to me. If Jace should have known, then I should have too.”

“Yes,” Robert said harshly, “you should have.”

Alec flinched. It was a small tremor, barely noticeable from the outside, but to Jace it was loud as a shout, the backwash of black, tarry guilt and self-recrimination enough to drown in.

“He couldn’t have known,” Jace said, dragging their attention back to himself, tearing the spotlight away from his _parabatai_ -brother because that could not be borne, he could not stand here and let them take slices from Alec’s hard-won pride, the confidence that was still small and fragile as a newborn bird. “He was a child when we bonded. We were _both_ children.”

“But you were never stupid,” Maryse said. “Surely when we talked about Michael, you must have known we couldn’t possibly have meant your father. The things we said about him could never have applied to Valentine.”

And Jace thought, _lie_ —suddenly, sharply, the thought blossoming like a flame inside his mind. As soon as he recognised the impulse he crushed it, appalled at himself because Shadowhunters did not lie to their superiors, absolutely did not lie to their parents, their family. It could only be Simon’s influence, his pragmatic mundane outlook that had no time for Nephilim honour, urging choices Jace could not make.

“You said he was a good man,” Jace said. He would not lose his temper, would not lose control. “A brave Shadowhunter, a loving father. I thought that seemed accurate enough.”

 _“Valentine?”_ Maryse demanded.

Jace stared at the wall beyond them, trying very hard to keep his expression smooth. Demands of his own clamoured in his mouth, rang like bronze in the belfry of his ribs. He wanted to demand to know why they wouldn’t believe him, why his word wasn’t enough, why they thought he was someone other than who he’d been since the day he came to them. But he bit them back, because they wouldn’t help.

“If he was such a good father to you,” Robert said coldly, “then why did you stay?”

Jace was startled into meeting Robert’s eyes.

“A good man, you said.” There was nothing soft in Robert’s face. There never had been. Sometimes he had been gentle, when Jace was younger, but it had always been a deliberate gentleness, cool and mechanical, never tender or spontaneous. “A loving father. So why did you stay, when he asked you to come back to Idris with him?”

“Because Valentine’s a lunatic,” Izzy said harshly, “and Jace isn’t stupid enough to forget it!”

“Isabelle, the Law grants that you may be present, but it does not grant that you may speak!” Robert snapped. “Be silent!”

“Why should I be quiet, when you’re asking such ridiculous questions?” Far from quailing, Izzy seemed to grow taller, drawing herself up and blazing until her dark hair seemed a streak of hellfire, throwing sparks. “Making such insane accusations! As if Jace was some sort of spy! He’s our _brother_ , he’s been our brother for _years!_ If you can’t see that—”

“We cannot trust anyone Valentine’s influence has touched,” Maryse said. Her words fell like stones, striking Isabelle silent. They lodged in Jace’s throat, cold and jagged-edged. “It’s too dangerous.”

“His influence touched _you,”_ Jace said, very quietly.

Instantly he wished he hadn’t; Maryse went white, as if Jace had slapped her, and Robert’s dark eyes grew darker still with thunder.

“We repudiated him,” Robert said, and each word was cold and sharp with rime.

“No,” Alec said suddenly, “you didn’t.” His jaw was tight, and he kept his gaze fixed on the polished wood of the desk, but his voice didn’t waver. “Lucian Graymark fought with the Downworlders. Michael Wayland didn’t fight at all. But you both fought _with_ Valentine, not against him. You didn’t turn away from him until you were arrested by the Clave.” He did not say, because he did not have to, that that was more the act of two cowards saving their skins than it was two people repulsed by Valentine’s ideologies.

Everyone stared at him, even Jace, who had never even glimpsed the flicker of such thoughts from Alec before. How deeply had they been buried, and how long had they been simmering, to boil over now?

“Alexander—” Maryse began, clearly still stunned.

Alec cut her off. “None of this actually matters.” His voice was cool and hard and unyielding, and he had never spoken to their parents like this before, maybe never spoken to _anyone_ like this before, and Jace wondered what Magnus had said, when Alec had chased after him, to provoke this, to start this fire. “We’re standing here debating Jace’s loyalties when we should be hunting for whoever killed Elias and Xia. That’s our actual job. You heard what Magnus said; if the warlocks decide not to sign the Accords—”

“Of course they’ll sign,” Robert said dismissively. “Bane is grieving, and it has unhinged him. Temporarily, I’m sure. But the fact remains that he is neither important enough to speak for all his people, nor—”

Jace felt Alec’s flash of protest like a firework, all gunpowder and light; felt him about to speak, then caught a fragment of a memory as it passed through Alec’s thoughts: Magnus’ eyes gone suddenly sharp and intent, his voice saying _‘I wasn’t aware the Nephilim paid such close attention to warlock affairs.’_

 _*I won’t give away his secrets,*_ Alec said, catching Jace listening in.

 _*Are Downworlders supposed to have secrets from Shadowhunters?*_ Jace asked, but it was not censuring. He thought of Simon and understood perfectly.

“The Spiral Court doesn’t even exist,” Robert was saying. They had missed part of his speech, but Jace doubted it mattered. “It’s a myth. The only Downworlders who have their own internal government are the fey.”

“That’s not true,” Alec said, and Jace heard him think _*Magnus already mentioned the Court, it’s not a secret, I can say this*._ “It _does_ exist, it’s existed for thousands of years. They founded it in 2902 BCE in Memphis, ancient Egypt, when they decided to make a concentrated effort to find and teach and protect warlock children. It used to be called something else, something to do with Sekhmet, because she was the one they called on to protect the children, their goddess of war and magic—”

He stopped, and Jace was there for the sharp _click_ of realisation, of pieces falling into place.

“Do you realise what it will mean,” Alec said slowly, ignoring or maybe not noticing how his parents were staring at him, speechless, taken aback by this defiance from the one child they had never thought to expect it from, “if the Court refuses to sign? You’re acting as though we’re only dealing with one—” His resolve faltered for a moment, flickering like a dying street lamp, but only his _parabatai_ caught it. “—one grieving father. We’re not. If the warlocks don’t sign, the other Downworlders will follow their lead. The Accords will be broken.” Jace saw it just before the words left Alec’s lips, and he mouthed it along with his brother, stunned.

“They just promised us _war_ if this killer isn’t found.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Izzy’s face and knew she’d understood it too, saw it in the tight press of her lips and her stiffened shoulders. War. Against the Downworlders who outnumbered them hundreds to one. It would leave them no time or resources to fight demons; it would whittle their caste to splinters, if any Shadowhunters survived at all. For all that it was lauded as the worst crime in their history, the Uprising had been a single pitched battle; Jace knew enough to understand that all-out war was a very different beast, one that could not be slayed as easily as Valentine’s little rebellion had been.

It should have made this interrogation feel small and meaningless by comparison. It didn’t.

“Maybe that’s what they want.” Jace hadn’t planned the words before he heard them coming out of his mouth, but they fell from his tongue like shards of a mirror and he took a vicious satisfaction in the dumbstruck expressions on their faces. _‘We cannot trust anyone Valentine’s influence has touched,’_ and oh, it was petty, petty and cruel and useless but he would hurt them as they had hurt him. “You said it, Alec; they didn’t renounce Valentine until they were forced to. Who’s to say they forsook him in their hearts? Maybe a war with the Downworld is exactly what they want.”

Maryse slapped him.

He saw it coming and stood still when he could have avoided it, letting her move Shadowhunter-quick _(but not as fast as he could move, never that fast)_ to reach him across the desk, and then his cheek was stinging and he almost smiled, he almost smiled with lead closing fast around his heart because he had won.

And she knew it. He saw it in her face, Alec’s outrage a flare in the background of his mind, Izzy’s hissed inhalation gunshot-loud; he had provoked her and she had lost control, and lost, and lost, and lost.

“I’ve never done anything to make you question me,” Jace said softly. “There is no blood on my hands. But yours are soaked in red. How can you point at me, after what you did? Condemn me for being born, when your crimes are legion?”

“We were exonerated,” Robert said. He held himself very still.

“And I have done nothing that needs exonerating,” Jace snapped, and the unfairness of it, the betrayal, to be turned on like this—they were his parents, they’d been his parents for half his life and how could it mean nothing, how could they do this to him, cast him out of their hearts for nothing more than the blood in his veins, for nothing he could choose— “He wanted the Cup, and I kept it from him. He asked me to leave with him and I stayed. What more do you want from me?”

“I want you to go.”

The world broke like glass.

“Mother!” Isabelle gasped. Robert, though, did not look shocked, and Jace wondered dully if they had planned this, if it had always been going to come to this. “You can’t mean that.”

Maryse’s lips had paled, but her face was set. “I can and I do. Thank the Angel, you never knew Valentine, Isabelle, but we did. He turned everyone he could lay hands on into a weapon for his cause; his friends, his wife. It defies belief that he would not do the same with his own son.”

“You can’t just—just throw Jace out on the street because you _believe_ Valentine is using him!” Izzy burst out. “Where’s your evidence? Why are you _doing_ this?”

“Control yourself, Isabelle,” Robert ordered. “You don’t understand how dangerous the Morgensterns can be, how dangerous they _are_. Your loyalty to your—” he hesitated, “—almost-brother does you credit, but we are the heads of this family, and we will—”

“Actually,” Alec said, quietly but with steely resolve, “you’re not.”

Robert recoiled as if he’d been struck; Maryse whipped her head to look at her eldest son, her dark eyes gone wide. “What?” she demanded gracelessly.

Oil, and water, and fire licking across the greasy surface of it all; Jace could feel how much Alec wanted to take back the words but he didn’t, ignored Jace’s urging _*don’t do this, it’s not worth it, I would never ask this of you*_ to repeat, louder, and coldly, “You are not the heads of this family.”

“I beg your pardon,” Robert said, “but—”

Alec cut across him. “Did you think I didn’t know, just because you never told me?” he demanded. “The Clave exiled you both. The Lightwood holdings were frozen, but not confiscated, because you had a child who had committed no crime: _me_. Exiles can’t hold Clave chairs, or own property, or claim blood names. But I turned eighteen months ago.” He was angry now, really angry, and again Jace wondered where Alec had been keeping this fury, wondered how long it had been banked. Alec had never breathed a word of this to his siblings, or to his _parabatai_. “The Lightwood seat is _mine_. The name, the monies, the manor—it’s all mine. I let you use it all because you’re my parents and I love you, I honour you, but you can’t turn out my brother. I won’t let you.”

Jace stopped breathing. He’d stopped even pretending not to stare at Alec; everyone else was too, amazed to see quiet, obedient Alec step out of the background to throw down the gauntlet.

Izzy looked like she wanted to cheer.

Maryse collected herself first. “He is not your brother,” she said, straightening her spine. “And you may be the head of this family in the eyes of the Law, but the Clave did not grant this Institute to the Lightwood _paterfamilias_. They granted it to your father and I, and we do not want Janim here.”

He had expected it—loved Alec for standing up to them, for letting out his fire at last, but he had not believed it would work—and yet it still felt like watching his father die in front of him when Maryse turned her cold gaze his way.

And wasn’t it the same? This was the death of another family, again, years after he’d stopped being afraid of it.

“You can have an hour to gather your belongings,” Robert said. “But leave Max alone. We’ll explain this to him later.”

Apparently they _could_ hurt his heart still more. Jace had been sure it was as full of pain as a heart could be, but now it spilled over, red and viscous. “I can’t say goodbye?”

His voice did not break. It _didn’t._

They didn’t yield. “It would only distress him,” Maryse said.

 _And what will you tell him?_ Jace wondered, vicious with hurt, ashes and seawater choking him, drowning him. _What will you tell him about why I’m gone?_

A touch on his shoulder drew him out of his thoughts. “Come on, Jace,” Izzy said, turning her back on their—on her parents. “Let’s go pack our things.”

It took him a beat to be sure he’d heard her correctly. When her blithe words processed, they almost sent him to his knees, overwhelmed by the earthquake of almost cruel relief, awful wonder, bitter, painful love.

 _I don’t deserve you. I’ll never deserve you._ But Raziel, he would never stop trying to.

“Isabelle?” her father asked. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” Alec asked, on Jace’s other side. He, too, had stepped closer to Jace, as if shielding him. “We’re going with him.”

Izzy glanced at her parents over her shoulder, her eyes wide in faux-amazement. “I’m sorry, father. But we’re _agelai_. If you cast out one of us, you cast out us all.” She linked arms with Jace, almost playfully. “Come along, Jace. I dread to think which shirts you’ll bring if we let you pack your own bag.”

Dazed, disbelieving, Jace let her lead him. _*You don’t have to do this. You shouldn’t do this!*_

 _*Yes, we do,*_ Alec said. _*And yes, we should.*_

Maryse was on her feet. Robert came out from behind the desk, clearly hesitating, as unable to believe it as Jace was. “Alexander. Isabelle! Stop this!”

They both ignored him.

 _*When did the two of you discuss this?*_ Jace whispered.

In that moment, he couldn’t see Alec’s face, but he felt his brother’s warmth, the unshakable solidity of Alec’s love for him. _*What makes you think we needed to?*_

*

St Xavier’s was the sort of school that called itself a ‘preparatory academy’, with a Latin motto no one understood and ivy growing like graffiti on its prestigious walls. In keeping with the décor, its graduates made Ivy League colleges more often than they didn’t, their applications nicely padded with things like applied mechanics and philosophy and film making.

To call it stuck-up was an understatement. But they had state-of-the-art computer labs and a music room with its own high-tech recording studio, so Simon kept his mouth shut and enjoyed the benefits.

St Xavier’s was also far enough from the centre of the city to have its own lawn, a sweep of flat green smooth as the icing on a cake, with a few marzipan trees to break up the skyline. This, too, was an unspeakable luxury in the city, but at a quarter to four Simon had more on his mind than the waste of so much space on purely decorative greenery.

He was hiding. It wasn’t much of a hiding place, given the aforementioned flatness of the turf and the complete lack of anything to hide behind, but no one was going to call him on it. That much had been made very clear.

Who was paying the school fees? he wondered, staring up at the fuzzy September clouds. He had never thought to wonder before—oblivious as only a teenager could be, airily assuming the stocks and shares of his mythical father was covering the cost of his school. Now, he supposed Jocelyn had been selling the jewels of her old life, her Shadowhunter life, to give him this new one—but now that she was in the hospital… Had anyone paid for him to be here this term? Luke, maybe? Did Luke have that kind of money? It couldn’t be Clary’s mom; Elaine worked two jobs to send Clary to St Xavier’s, no way did she have any left over to pay for Simon too…

He was coming to the awful realisation that probably _no one_ had paid for his tuition this term when a shadow passed between his face and the sky.

There was no thought, only an abrupt white-out, the achromic heat of panic-fear searing away everything but the deeply-buried instincts he didn’t want, hadn’t asked for, couldn’t resist; the neurons were still firing in his brain as Simiel flew to his hand and he was pushing himself up, lashing out at an ankle by his shoulder, lunging at the other body. He crashed into the person who’d snuck up on him and they both fell to the ground in a snarling tangle, _“Simiel!”_

_“Simon!”_

Simon froze. Clary stared up at him, her green eyes stained jade with shock and fear.

Fear. Simiel glinted in the sunlight, crystalline rainbows skittering along the edge of the blade, dancing over Clary’s throat. Because the knife was so close to her neck.

Because he was holding it there.

She was afraid of _him._

Simon jerked away as if electrocuted, scrambling away as if Clary had turned into a monster under him—but she hadn’t, _he_ had, Jesus fucking Christ he’d almost—almost—

He couldn’t even let go of the knife, Simiel was locked against his hand—

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m—oh my God, oh my _God_ —”

Why had he—how could he—he’d almost—

“Simon, ssh.” Clary was sitting up, watching him but making no move to approach. Probably for the best, seeing as he’d so nearly— “It’s all right, I’m fine. You didn’t hurt me. We’re okay.”

She was too pale beneath her freckles, but the words did their job; as Clary kept up the steady stream of soothing reassurance, Simiel’s glow slowly dimmed, then faded. When Simon’s heartbeat had almost returned to normal, the blade fell from his hand, the celestial magnetism that held hilt to palm evaporated now that he was calming down.

“It’s okay,” he managed finally, unable to look at her—ashamed, ashamed and so fucking horrified, guilty— “I’m—I’m not going to—”

He stopped, helplessly.

“What happened?” Clary asked quietly.

Simon sat down in the grass, graceless, and retrieved his seraph blade. Instead of lingering with it in his hand, savouring the smooth crystal and perfect heft, he shoved it into his belt. He didn’t want to think about—about what had just happened, but he had to. “I think—I think I got scared,” he said thickly. _You scared me_ , was what he meant; but that sounded accusatory, as if he were blaming Clary for what he’d done, when it wasn’t her fault. Couldn’t be her fault. “I didn’t hear you coming—your face just popped into my view, and for a second I didn’t recognise you. There was just this shadow, this blurry human-shape, not a person I knew, and I—I panicked.”

Panicked, because he knew full well that St Xavier’s was not demon-proof. Panicked because Luke was out there somewhere, and who knew what he was up to, what he might try; because Abigor had been after him specifically, out for Simon’s burning blood and no one else’s; because Simon’s father was still free, and no one believed he was gone for good. And it could have been any of them, a demon/a dad/a father, coming for him where he was unprotected…

“I’m sorry,” he said again, sick to his stomach. “I didn’t know it was you. I’m sorry.”

He buried his face in his hands, trying to breathe.

After a little while, he heard Clary get up and come to sit next to him on the grass. He couldn’t see if she hesitated before placing her hand on his shoulder, and he didn’t want to know.

“It’s not that surprising,” she offered finally. “It would be weirder if you _didn’t_ have some kind of PTSD, after everything.”

That was…actually pretty true. But it didn’t make him feel any less guilty, any less sickened by what could have happened. If she’d been too shocked to call his name, would he have woken up in time? Or would he have come back to himself with his best friend’s blood on his hands?

The problem was not that he couldn’t imagine it. It was that he could imagine it all too easily.

“I could have killed you,” he whispered.

She squeezed his shoulder. “But you didn’t. We’ll talk to Jace about it, okay? This has to be—Shadowhunters must know how to deal with this.” She said it lightly, but the truth of it dropped between them like a stone. “They’re probably all traumatised.”

“Maybe.” Probably.

He could have killed her.

“So how was the rest of your day?” she asked brightly, and he snorted despite himself at her playfully chipper tone. “I didn’t hear any screaming, so I’m guessing no demons descended.”

“No, did you see all this sun? They were all touching up their tans today.” He lowered his hands from his face. “Somebody told them about mom.”

She winced, understanding at once that he wasn’t talking about the demons now. “It might have been my mom,” she said apologetically.

“Or Luke, I guess. It doesn’t make much of a difference.” The thick, clogging pain that had made him ditch his last class and run out here was growing back into his throat as he thought about it. “Every teacher— _every_ teacher, even Mr Shinde—wanted to talk about it. Say how sorry they were, they were here for me, all that—all that crap.” His chest felt too tight, constricted.

“Oh, Simon,” Clary said softly.

“I just wasn’t expecting it, you know?” He plucked a strand of grass and started shredding it between his fingers. “I thought going back to school would be—it would make things normal. Sure, Jace made sure I’m carrying enough metal to outfit an armoury, but no one’s actually expecting a demon attack here, and there’s too many witnesses for Valentine to try something, even if he can make himself invisible to mun—to Light Worlders. So.” He shrugged, blinking hard. “And then everyone wants to talk about mom. Every teacher. So I can’t forget it even for a second, and I spend the whole next class waiting for _that_ teacher to call me up and give me the speech, or _worse_ , come down to my desk to say it quietly, while we’re supposed to be working and _everyone else can fucking hear—”_

He stopped.

Over in the main building, the end-of-period bell rang, shrill and piercing, signalling the end of the day. It only took a minute before students in St Xavier’s dark blue uniforms were streaming out of the doors, talking and laughing and groaning under the weight of first-day homework. All of them blind, all of them blissfully, innocently oblivious to the underworld that had already left its scars on Simon and Clary.

It was hard not to hate them, a little.

“She’ll wake up,” Clary said.

Simon couldn’t bring himself to answer; couldn’t make himself ask the question that had been choking him all day. _But what if she doesn’t?_

Clary sighed. “Come on,” she said, standing up and pulling Simon with her. “Jace said he was picking you up, right? Let’s go find him.”

*

Jace was waiting at the school gates, standing a little apart from the crowd of waiting parents and au pairs, and either ignoring or oblivious to the side-eying he was receiving from them. He was entirely out of place in this company, his dragon-leather jacket, black jeans, and snarky t-shirt _(I know right from wrong: wrong is the fun one)_ screaming _delinquent_ in a way that drew appreciative attention from the departing female students and scandalised outrage from their parents, and he just as clearly didn’t care.

Simon was so ridiculously happy to see him that it took a beat to notice Alec and Izzy standing alongside him.

When he did, he was a little taken aback. It had been a while since he’d seen Alec, maybe a little over a week; he didn’t remember the eldest Lightwood being so pale, or so tired-looking. Alec was wearing a ragged blue sweater a size or two too big for him with a white ribbon tied around one arm, and plain sneakers beneath threadbare jeans. Next to him Isabelle was her usual flawless self, in black corset leggings and stiletto heels. The ruby pendant Simon rarely saw her without anymore burned like blood above a black tank top, with _mother of dragons_ emblazoned in fiery gold across her chest; apparently she had moved on to the _Song of Ice and Fire_ after _Harry Potter_. Somehow he wasn’t surprised.

But he _was_ surprised to see them here, Alec and Izzy. Jace hadn’t mentioned his siblings would be coming with him.

“Our parents came home today,” Izzy said when he asked about it, after the _hi_ s and _hello_ s and they’d left St Xavier’s behind them. Clary had moved to walk next to her and now the two girls walked arm-in-arm, red hair paired with black. “We had a disagreement of opinion, and the three of us decided to move out.”

Simon glanced at Jace, startled, looking for his opinion, but Jace had his hands in his pockets and his eyes lowered, and Simon couldn’t catch his gaze. “Out of the Institute?” Simon asked, just to clarify. _What kind of argument—on the day your parents come home—would make you want to move out?_

“We’ve been apartment hunting all day,” Izzy confirmed breezily. “We found the perfect place about an hour ago; now we have to go pay for it.”

Well, that explained why they were all wearing backpacks, at least. Simon looked at his _aikane_ again, wondering why Jace hadn’t told him this, any of it, when he’d called between Simon’s classes. Wasn’t this important? Wasn’t it something Simon ought to know?

 _You didn’t tell him about your teachers,_ a voice whispered. _You didn’t tell him how they talked about Jocelyn, how it hurt, how it turned the breath in your lungs to cement and choked you._

 _I didn’t want to bother him,_ Simon whispered to himself, defensive.

_Maybe he didn’t want to bother you, either._

“How _do_ you pay for things?” Clary was asking. “I’ve been wondering that for a while. Are there Shadowhunter credit cards?”

“You can come and see, if you like,” Izzy said cheerfully.

Alec emerged from his thoughts to frown at his sister. “Izzy…”

“Oh, why not?” Izzy asked. “It’s a bit late to be worried about the fraternization rule now, isn’t it?”

“There’s a fraternization rule?” Simon asked. “Why haven’t I heard about this before?”

For the first time in the conversation, Jace spoke up. “The Nephilim don’t mix with mundanes.”

 _“Light Worlders,”_ Simon corrected automatically.

Jace rolled his eyes. “Especially not Shadowhunters,” he continued, as if Simon hadn’t spoken. “Our oaths forbid us from telling them anything about the Shadow World. We can’t be friends with them. We don’t watch their movies or read their books.” He shrugged, his shoulders moving beneath his jacket. “If we do, and the Clave decides it was a large enough infraction…”

“Let me guess,” Simon said. “You can be stripped of your runes.” He spoke lightly, but every word tasted like frostbite. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m sensing a theme here.”

Jace nodded, once.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Simon demanded angrily. Next to Izzy, Clary had gone white. “I wouldn’t have— _Harry Potter_ , and _Lord of the Rings_ , and Time Lords know what else we showed you—you should have told us!”

“If we told you, you wouldn’t have shown us those things,” Izzy said. Her playfulness was gone, stripped away, and beneath it her eyes burned with intensity, with something fierce and longing. “And we liked them. I _loved_ them.” She shot Alec a defiant look, but Alec didn’t seem to be disagreeing with her. “We spend our whole lives fighting to protect the mund—the _Light World_. Our grandparents died for it; someday we’ll die for it too. Why shouldn’t we be allowed to see what we’re fighting for? Why shouldn’t we be allowed to enjoy it?” Her voice grew sharper, harsher, and Simon heard rage in it, rage at the unfairness of her life, rage that must have been buried for years. “We paid for it, didn’t we? Every Shadowhunter pays for it in blood. It’s our world too, it’s _ours!”_

She stopped, suddenly, sharply. No one else said a word.

After a moment, she lifted her chin, daring them to comment. “I recognise that it is a rule,” she said coolly, “but given that it’s a stupid rule, I elected to ignore it.” She paused. “And so did my brothers.”

“I—did you just paraphrase Nick Fury?” Simon asked. “Who showed you the _Avengers?_ That one is not on me!”

Unrepentant, Clary raised her hand. “Guilty.”

Isabelle smirked.

“Why is there never a desk around when you need to head-desk?” Simon asked the sky. But he didn’t mean it, didn’t mean a word of it. And from the smile Izzy tossed him like a coin, he thought she knew it.

Because she was right. She—they—deserved every bit of joy they could reach, for what they did. They’d earned it a hundredfold.

“More importantly,” Izzy said, “why isn’t there a Black Widow movie yet? Natasha is clearly the greatest Avenger.”

“As flattered as I am that you are all risking your livelihoods to be friends with me,” Clary said, “and as much as I agree with you about Natasha, Izzy, do not think that I don’t—you still haven’t answered my question.”

“That’s because I don’t know what a credit card is,” Izzy explained.

“Ah.”

Alec surprised them all by speaking up. “If you give it a minute,” he said, “you’ll see for yourself how our finances work.” He gestured towards the subway station ahead of them. “The bank’s just a few stops away.”

“ ‘The bank’?” Clary repeated disbelievingly as they trooped underground after Alec. “Shadowhunters have a _bank?”_

*

Not just any bank, but Bank of America.

“It’s run by merchant adventurers,” Jace explained, as Simon and Clary looked around at the shining marble and glass of the bank’s interior. “One of the Nephilim castes. They work out in the mundane world—” He saw Simon’s look. “—excuse me, out in the _Light World_ , to make sure that Idris has all it needs from outside its borders. Food, metals… Anything we can’t make ourselves, they buy and ship home.”

“They invest Nephilim gold in mundane industries,” Alec added absently. Unlike his siblings, he didn’t correct his choice of words; Simon would get him later. “To increase our wealth. It’s an important job.”

Simon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “And no one notices?” he demanded incredulously. “That, what, thousands of dollars worth of, of _supplies_ just vanishes into the ether every year? That there’s money on the market coming out of thin air? Where does the IRS think it’s all coming from?”

Jace gave him an odd look. “Of course they notice. That’s the adventurers’ other task; to interact with Light Worlder governments for us.”

“Interact—the government _knows_ about you?!”

“How could they not?” Izzy asked, clearly surprised. They were waiting in line to talk to one of the bank tellers, and keeping their voices appropriately low, but it was obvious Isabelle was shocked Simon hadn’t worked this out already. “Maybe a hundred years ago we could work in secret, but there’s too many places our worlds touch now. Your BFI—”

“I think you mean the FBI,” Clary said.

Izzy waved her hand. “Whatever, they track disappearances and murders. How could they not find out about demons eventually? Or when Abigor attacked Simon and Jace—hundreds of Light Worlders saw _something_ , even if they couldn’t see Abigor’s true form. We can’t cover that up or explain it away. Merchant adventurers and Light World officials have to work together to do that.”

“A gas leak, a terrorist attack…” Simon murmured.

Isabelle nodded. “Exactly.”

“So they’re not really just merchants,” Clary said. “Not anymore.”

“No,” Alec agreed. “They were, centuries ago, but now they’re more than that. They live as mundanes in positions of power—economic or political—to safeguard the Nephilim. Shadowhunters protect the mundane world, but merchant adventurers shield and succour the Shadowed one.”

Simon and Clary paused to consider this.

“Are all the big banks run by Shadow Worlders?” Clary asked speculatively.

“Of course not,” Izzy said. “I think the only other one is JPMorgan Chase.” She glanced at her brothers. “Vampires, isn’t it?”

Alec nodded absently, and Clary’s eyebrows shot up.

“I think it’s our turn,” Jace said suddenly. Sure enough, one of the tellers was waving them forward.

Alec sighed. Without a word, he took point, leading their strange little group over to the counter and the smiling young woman behind the glass.

“Hi there,” she said brightly as they approached. Her uniform was crowned by a neat green hijab, the silky material gracefully framing her face. “How can I help you?”

Still without speaking, Alec pushed up his right sleeve and held out his arm to her, silently showing her the Marks on his skin.

Simon watched with interest as the woman’s eyes went wide; her mouth made a small _o._ “I see,” she said after a moment. “Please just wait a moment, Mr…?”

“Lightwood,” Alec said tonelessly.

She nodded. “Mr Lightwood. One moment, please.” She rose from her chair and disappeared out of sight.

Alec rolled his sleeve down.

“She saw your runes!” Clary hissed. “How could she see your runes?”

“Well,” Jace said, “either she has a stone like yours, or she’s a merchant adventurer.”

“Or a Sighted mundane,” Alec said. “There are still a few of them around.”

“A what now?” Simon asked.

“A Light Worlder with the Sight,” Izzy said. “There used to be whole families of them, bloodlines that served Institutes out in the Light World, or worked with the merchant adventurers. There aren’t many left now, though.”

“Why not?” Clary asked. She sounded suspicious, and given how messed-up the Shadow World tended to be, Simon thought her wariness was justified. He prayed they weren’t about to hear that all the Sighted Light Worlders had been murdered.

“Most of them drank from the Cup,” Izzy said. “They either died or became Shadowhunters.”

Before Simon and Clary could ask any more questions, they spotted the teller returning, walking up to them from this side of the glass, this time. “Mr Lightwood, if you and your party would come this way, we’ll get you served.”

Alec nodded and followed her. Since Jace and Izzy followed him, Simon and Clary tagged along too.

The Muslim woman led them down an elegantly cool corridor and a series of stairs, descending deep into the earth. It must have been almost fifteen minutes before they came to a door Marked with an _enkeli_ rune, at the end of a dark, metal-lined hallway. Simon shivered as the Mark’s song whispered over his bones, strumming through his veins, but then the bank teller drew an opening Mark on the door with a stele carved with incredible geometric designs, and the music faded away as she gestured them inside.

Into a large, round room of black marble, lit not by electricity but by witchlight lanterns that began to glow a chill white the moment they stepped through the doorway. Subtle lines of Marks shimmered in the marble, just visible when Simon tilted his head and squinted; he could feel them all humming, vibrating, as if he were standing in the resonating chamber of a guitar. A pair of low black sofas, edged in gold, framed the wide, round pillar in the centre of the room; carved of the same dark stone as the windowless walls, it came up to Simon’s waist. A pair of unobtrusive, slender daggers rested on red velvet on top of it.

“It’s freezing in here,” Clary muttered.

Isabelle dropped down on one of the sofas, patting the cushions for Clary to sit beside her. Not sure what to do with himself, Simon copied them, gingerly taking a seat next to Clary. Jace and Alec remained standing.

The bank teller closed the door behind them and moved to the wall. Simon couldn’t see what she did there, but he heard a sharp, piercing rune-song, and when the woman turned back to them there was a small safe open behind her and an unhewn chunk of crystal in her hands. It was the size of a soccer ball, the largest piece of _adamas_ Simon had yet seen, and as she set it down carefully on the table Simon glimpsed an unfamiliar Mark on the back of her right hand; not a Shadowhunter’s _voyance_ , but something else.

“If you would confirm your identity for me, sir?” she asked, turning to Alec respectfully. She proffered one of the daggers from the table. 

“I have my own,” Alec said. He drew a knife from within his left sleeve, and before Simon could cry out he sliced it against his palm, opening a steady stream of red across his hand.

Clary hissed between her teeth.

Alec ignored them, instead closing his bloodied hand around the blade, making sure the metal was wet with red. Only then did he walk up to the table and plunge the knife into the crystal.

 _The sword in the stone,_ Simon thought inanely, as a hundred tiny Marks covering every inch of the _adamas_ came alight with fire. The knife had entered some sort of slit in the crystal, and now Alec’s blood threaded through dozens of thread-thin channels in it, winding and weaving into a complex pattern within the gem. In seconds the blood reached the sides of the rock, and when it did the crystal suddenly became opaque, cloudy and milky like crimson-streaked moonstone, with a new symbol forming out of the murk; a stylised flame, etched in gold.

The Lightwood symbol.

The woman smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

Alec nodded and withdrew his blade. The Lightwood crest remained for a moment or two, before it started to fade, the _adamas_ becoming clear and diamond-like once more.

“That rock,” Jace murmured in Simon’s ear, and Simon jumped, his heart suddenly pounding hard against his ribs, “is a small piece of a very big corestone kept in Alicante.” Jace was leaning on the back of the sofa, his upper body bent over it, and his lips were too close to Simon’s jaw. Simon swallowed hard. “Where, not coincidentally, the Lightwood gold is housed. Alec’s just confirmed his right to draw on it.”

“And where does the gold come from?” Simon asked, concentrating on keeping still, calm, respectable.

Izzy had risen from her seat to draw an _iratze_ for her brother. Alec let her do it, already deep in discussion with the merchant adventurer.

“Killing,” Jace said softly. “Our weapons are forged with runes; it’s what makes them able to hurt demons. But they also count our kills, and we earn for each one.”

That…was pretty creepy, actually. “Earn what?” Simon asked. Jace’s breath was warm on his neck. “You said gold. Is that store credit? Galleons? Poke-Dollars? Ryō?”

“Celestes,” Jace said. Simon could hear his smirk. “Actually.”

Clary was right there, and Jace wasn’t saying—or doing—anything inappropriate for a public place, but… Simon swallowed and moved his head a little, away, silently telling Jace _later, not now._

“Seraph blades are locked to our accounts when we bond,” Jace said. If he was upset by the small rejection, there was no sign of it in his voice. “But our other weapons have to taste our blood, either during forging or when we receive them, so the blades know who we are.”

All of Alec’s weapons must be blooded, then, because he had no bonded seraph swords. “We’ve never blooded mine,” Simon pointed out.

Jace shrugged. “You have no accounts with the Idrian banks.”

Simon wondered how you went about opening one, and if it was worth the bother for him to try. “But if Alec’s dagger already knows who he is, why did he have to bleed now?”

“Extra security. It’s hard to steal a Shadowhunter’s weapon, but not impossible. It’s to stop someone walking in with another’s blade and cleaning out their accounts.”

Nephilim identity theft. In a weird way, it was kind of funny. “Huh.” Izzy and Clary had their heads bent together, and he wondered if Izzy was explaining all this to Clary as Jace was to him.

Jace fell silent then, and Simon was left to watch Alec and the bank woman—a Nephilim, by that that rune on her hand; Simon wondered what a merchant adventurer’s runes were for, how they differed from the ones worn by Shadowhunters—discuss numbers. For all that Alec looked almost ill, he stood straight as he spoke, calm and confident and determined—he knew what he wanted, and knew his right to it.

“But where does Alec’s money come from?” Simon wondered suddenly, just remembering to keep his voice low. “He’s never killed a demon. You told me that, right back in the beginning.” _The beginning;_ as if this was a story, and not his life, all their lives. “But he has enough to buy an apartment?”

Simon felt the change run through Jace before the words were all the way out of his mouth; a gust of cold like the wind waltzing through an abandoned house. “It’s the Lightwood family fortune,” Jace said. “Not a personal account. Only the _paterfamilias_ , and those with their permission, can access it.”

 _“Paterfamilias?”_ Simon echoed, confused. “That’s Latin.”

“It means ‘head of the family’,” Isabelle said. Simon started; he’d forgotten how good Shadowhunter hearing was. “In Rome, it was always a man, of course. The Nephilim are more equal-opportunity.”

Clary was frowning. “Then Alec is—? But what about your parents?”

“They’re traitors,” Alec said. Simon and Clary both jumped this time; the eldest Lightwood scion had appeared in front of them almost out of thin air. His eyes were shadowed, and the merchant adventurer was gone. _“Vainottu. Outcasten_ can’t rule a House. That leaves me.”

“Traitors?” Clary asked. _“Outcasten? Vainottu?_ What?”

“Out-caste,” Izzy murmured, low. Jace’s eyes, when Simon glanced at him, were shuttered, the windows in them locked and bolted. “Exiles, cast-out. And _vainottu_ —it means ‘hunted’.”

Simon frowned. “I don’t get it.”

It was Jace who answered. “We’re Shadowhunters,” he said. “The Angel’s warriors. Lights set to burn against the darkness.” Every word was carved out of ice, cold and hard and awful. _“Vainottu_ are pieces of that darkness. They are the things we hunt.”

It came clear in a burst of terrible clarity, blinding like sunlight. “Because they fought in the Uprising?”

“No,” Alec said. “Because they fought on the wrong side.”

Simon looked at Alec’s face and remembered the words he’d spoken at Magnus’ party, the weight of them on his tongue, perfectly balanced like a throwing dagger: _‘You think my mom’s a coward? At least she fought on the right side of the Uprising. What about yours? And your dad._

_‘How many Shadowhunters do you think your parents murdered that day?’_

He’d meant those words to hurt, to wound. But maybe all he’d done was find an injury already extant.

Alec turned away before any of them could speak. “We’ve got what we came for. Let’s go.”

* * *

 

NOTES

 

An amphisbaena is a two-headed snake from Greek mythology; it gets around by rolling like a wheel, with one head biting the neck of the other to form a circle.

In the 13th century Middle French, a canton is literally ‘a portion of a country’. The Nephilim use the word to refer to the area which is the responsibility of a particular Institute—so, New York is the canton of the New York Institute.

In Runed, the first Accords were signed in 1810, considerably earlier than in canon (1872). As City of Shadows/Dreams/Knives is set in 2014 (not 2007, as in canon), and the Accords are signed every 17 years, the Accords have been signed 11 times, and are due to be signed for the 12th time a month from the start of Knives.

Sekhmet is an Egyptian goddess of love, war, and protection. Way back in the beginning of what we call ancient Egypt, she was considered rich in magic and was often called on by healers. This was a few centuries before the cult of Isis really got going; later Isis became known as the goddess of magic, and sometimes love too.

 _Paterfamilias_ is a Roman term for the head of the household, literally the husband/father/eldest male. In Nephilim culture it’s an ungendered term, with the _paterfamilias_ as often a woman as a man; sometimes it’s shared between a married couple or siblings, or a pair of _parabatai_ or _parastathtenes_. You also don’t become _paterfamilias_ just by virtue of being the eldest family member; it’s about capability, not age. Exiles and other criminals are considered incapable. Among the Shadowhunter caste, the _paterfamilias_ of each family holds a seat on the Clave; this is the ‘chair’ Alec is referring to, which gives the _paterfamilias_ the ability to vote in/on any Clave decision. As war criminals, Maryse and Robert are most certainly forbidden from holding the Lightwood chair.

For those of you who are not Americans—JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the USA, meaning that the Downworlder-run bank is quite a bit larger/richer than the Nephilim one! Make of that what you will.

Merchant adventurers are a real thing! Or they were. Um. Not the Nephilim ones, obviously. But way back in the Middle Ages, merchant adventurers were the ones who went abroad to set up branches of already-established trading houses; thus, merchants who went off to have adventures in the wild scary places. It seemed appropriate.

Galleons—largest coins in the _Harry Potter_ word.

Poke-dollars are the currency in the English releases of the Pokemon franchise.

Ryō—the currency of Naruto.

 _Outcasten_ is the Middle English word that eventually turned into ‘outcast’, but I like that it sounds so much like the Indian ‘outcaste’ (literally, cast out of your caste), since the Nephilim society is divided up into castes a little bit like the Indian one. Among the Nephilim, _outcasten_ is one of the worst things you can call someone.

 _Vainottu_ —again, one of the worst insults among the Nephilim, particularly amongst Shadowhunters. Think _Harry Potter’s_ ‘blood traitor’ and you’ve got the right feel of it, but there’s an aspect of monstrousness to it too. (It’s originally a Finnish adjective, but I nabbed it because that is a thing I do with languages I don’t speak. You may have noticed.)


	4. Angels and Agelae

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AT LAST! I thought this chapter would never be done! But so much credit goes to Starrie_Wolf, my fabulous new beta! ZE IS BEYOND AMAZING, YOU GUYS! I couldn't have done this without zem - and then ze went and beta-ed the entire chapter in a couple of hours! 
> 
> Also; from now on, * indicates a timeskip or scene change, while *** indicates a POV change. Just so you know. 
> 
> I also want to say a huge thank you to everyone who comments, reviews, faves and follows. Some of you already know that I have carpal tunnel, and physically can’t answer all the incredible messages and reviews this series gets—but I swear I read and treasure every single one. I wish I could write you all essays of gratitude. You’ve no idea what it means to me. You all rock so much!
> 
> And finally - this chapter is as long as all the previous chapters combined. YOU'RE WELCOME.

“Okay,” Clary said. “Let’s go over it one more time. Just so I can be sure I understand what you’re telling me here.”

Simon grinned, leaning back into the sinfully lush sofa to watch the show. Next to him, her eyes fixed on her brother and Clary, Izzy held out her hand, and he passed her the bowl of popcorn.

Even Jace, over in the corner with at least two dozen sharp, pointy things spread around him for sharpening, looked like he might be hiding a smile.

“Okay...” Alec looked wary. Smart man.

Clary held up a single finger. “Item one: given that land tends to retain or increase its value over the long-term, there are a lot of Downworlders in real estate.”

“Only the immortal ones, really,” Jace commented idly. “Werewolves don’t usually have the resources to buy up land.”

Clary pointed at him. “You, shut up. I am talking to Alec. I can only handle one of you lunatics at a time right now, and you are not that one. Yes? Yes? Awesome. Shut it.”

Izzy laughed.

“Item two! Older vampires, the smart ones, tend to be rich.”

“That is a _gross_ oversimplification—” Alec began.

“ _Older vampires, the smart ones, tend to be rich,”_ Clary repeated loudly. “Yes or no?”

“Just say yes,” Simon advised, with mock-sympathy. “Or it’ll only get worse.”

“…Yes.”

“Wonderful. Item three: given items one and two, vampire-designed real estate is usually ridiculously, stupidly luxurious.”

“They cater to the wealthy,” Alec agreed, carefully. He might have been squinting suspiciously at her a little.

“Item four,” Clary continued, “given the rarity of wealthy werewolves—”

“Alliteration points!” Simon called. He tossed an Oreo at her.

Clary snatched it neatly out of the air, took a bite, and shook its remains at him. “No interruptions!”

“Not even for cookies?” Simon asked, puppy-plaintive.

“…Maybe. No!” she said as Simon and Izzy laughed. “Shut up! I’m trying to make sense of this!” She was grinning too, and trying to put her serious face back on. “Shut it! _Given the rarity of wealthy werewolves_ , and since faeries don’t give a fuck about living outside their knowes—because IRON, hah, I know a thing, nerf herders!—vampires mostly sell-and-or-rent to super-rich Light Worlders, other vampires, warlocks,” she was counting on her fingers, “aaaaand, _travelling Shadowhunters.”_

“Nephilim who want a residence outside Idris, yes,” Alec said. “But not just Shadowhunters. Merchant adventurers, for one, often—”

 _“In conclusion,”_ Clary said loudly, drowning him out as Izzy doubled over, tears of laughter in her eyes, “You bought a Hekate-damned vampire apartment.”

“Evidence!” Simon yelled. He threw a piece of popcorn at her. “Citations! CITE YOUR SOURCES!”

“Evidence?! You want _evidence_ , you warthog-faced buffoon?” Clary spun in a circle with her arms out, gesturing to encompass the entirety of their surroundings. “If Fort Knox and the Ritz had a baby, it would be this building! And we are in the penthouse! _It has three floors!_ Did you know multi-storied apartments existed, Simon? Because you should have told me, that is important info that I needed to know for my life goals, what kind of friend are you?” She stopped spinning. “There is a _pool_ , you guys. _There is a pool. In the apartment. What.”_

“Swimming is excellent exercise!” Alec protested, clearly confused. Maybe he’d never seen a sugar-high before; he seemed a bit alarmed by Clary’s bright-eyed mania. “A Shadowhunter’s home has to have some kind of exercise facilities; it’s not as though we could train at a mundie gym—ow!”

“LIGHT WORLDER,” Simon yelled, brandishing another Oreo threateningly as Izzy rolled off the sofa, hysterical. “Don’t say ‘mundie’, it’s _Light Worlder,_ you peasant, you uncultured _swine_ —”

“Uncultured? Hey!” This time Alec ducked, with the smoothly blurring motion of a trained Shadowhunter. “Raziel give me strength, _why are you throwing cookies at me?”_

“Because ‘mundane’ is patronising as fuck!” Clary yelled at him. “I am not mundane, I am not boring, I am a QUEEN.”

“An empress!” Simon bit into a cookie, trying not to choke on crumbs and laughter.

Clary pointed at him. “Yes!” She turned back to Alec. “You see? I am awesome, I am a Sailor Soldier of the gods-damned Morning Star—”

Simon frowned as something occurred to him. “I’m pretty sure the morning star is Venus,” he objected. “That would make you Minako, wouldn’t it?”

“Or Lucifer,” Jace said, not quite under his breath.

Clary waved a hand to shush him. “I may be too awesome for your puny mortal mind to handle,” she was telling Alec, “but that does not make me a mundane anything!”

Jace laughed. Probably none of the others heard him under the racket, but Simon heard, felt it catch like a hook of velvet in his heart and turned to see Jace gilded, every golden line of him lit up by the light coming through the windows, as if the sun wanted to touch him as badly as Simon did. It hurt to look at him, a sweet pain like the first breath after a too-deep dive; to see, just for a moment, Jace without the weight he always carried, without the mask he always wore, with nothing to dilute or shadow the pure auric light of him that was usually kept hidden—to see him smiling and mean it, a shining shard of real, unabashed happiness glistering in those eyes after all these weeks of worry—

 _Ol boaluahe gi,_ he thought, his blood singing like wine-kissed crystal; _I love you_ , the Enochian words blossoming like the midnight _medianox_ flower in the Institute greenhouse in his mind, on his tongue—all shimmering white-gold, unfolding into iridescence. _I love you, I love you,_ all the thousand reasons why joined like voices in a choir, loud enough to blow the world to dust—

And it was so _immense_ , this feeling, so wonderful and terrible all at once, as if with every breath he risked his heart bursting open in a shower of diamonds from the pressure—it was so _much_ that Simon longed for Jace to be closer, here, within reach, so he could ground it in Jace’s skin like lightning in the earth.

He felt that want echoed suddenly, like a song in a dark place, like a lover’s pulse; him and not-him, a shiver like a lullaby whispering down a harp-string, and when Jace swept his knives aside nothing could have been more natural, made more sense. Jace flowed smoothly to his feet and of course he felt it too; how could he not, this twinned heartbeat resounding in their chests, this gold ribbon binding them? Simon pulled on that cord without thinking and Jace’s pupils swallowed the light as he crossed the room, dark eclipses fixed on Simon and there was nothing else, no one else—only Jace slipping into Simon’s lap like a spill of light-kissed water, settling over his hips and folding into him with a sigh, eyes falling closed, tipping his brow against Simon’s as Simon reached up to cradle his jaw—

And the music was so loud—the bones in Simon’s hands and face were humming with it, reverberating with it, the melody rising from Jace’s skin to surround him, the orchestra of his runes roaring in Simon’s ears—

Somebody coughed.

The boys froze. The music splintered into silence, drowned out by reality, and Simon’s brain flat-lined.

_No, I didn’t—we didn’t just—Clary!_

Jace’s face shut down, all trace of the soft joy that had suffused it a moment before utterly gone. His eyes, when they snapped open, were blank as razors, and Simon was torn between trying to soothe him, reassure him, and finding a way to pretend this wasn’t what it looked like—

Except that of course it _was_ , and he would never, ever do that to Jace. But Jesus in the Tardis, this was not how he’d wanted Clary to find out.

Sick to his stomach, and ashamed of it, he turned to see how Clary was taking this.

He wasn’t the only one. Alec was bright red, but he and Izzy were both trying to hide that they were also watching Clary—and doing a pretty bad job of it.

“What?” Clary asked. She glanced between the three of them. Jace was not looking at her; he was staring at nothing. “I had popcorn stuck in my throat! I’m not freaking out! Why is everyone looking at me? You guys are the ones who—”

She paused and squinted at Alec suspiciously.

“We’re what?” Alec asked defensively.

“The ones with the Puritanical sexual scruples,” Clary said absently. She was still staring at him, and suddenly her eyes widened. “Oh my gods, _you already knew!_ Didn’t you?” she demanded, whirling from Alec to his sister.

“Um…” Izzy shot a questioning look at Simon.

That was enough confirmation for Clary. Her face thunderous, she made straight for Simon. “You unutterable—”

Simon _snarled_ , low and savage and terrible, and he caught a peripheral glimpse of shock breaking through Jace’s mask before he had an arm around Jace’s waist, pull-swinging him out of Simon’s lap and onto the sofa behind him, where Simon was between him and the thing that could hurt him—

And the music was so loud, so many points of sound screaming in the room for him to call on, like fires, like stars—

And Clary snatched up a pillow and smacked him in the face with it.

 _“Best friends—come—before—in-laws!”_ she chanted, beating him over the head to emphasise her words—gently, but at the first touch he was back, back from wherever he’d gone, that dark, animal place inside—

“I didn’t tell them!” he protested, shaken, his mouth running on auto-pilot, struggling to keep up. “Clary! Stop!”

“And no snarling when someone calls you on it!” she added, clearly completely unafraid _(as she should be, he’d never hurt her—he wouldn’t have, at school, he **wouldn’t** have)_. But she had pity on him, drawing back with the pillow still clutched in her hands. “Did you really not tell them?”

“Of course not.” Simon felt—almost dizzy, dizzy and sick and confused, with the beginnings of relief building. She wasn’t—mad, disgusted, afraid _(even if maybe, maybe she should be…)_ “Why on earth would I do that?”

“I _was_ wondering.” She sat back on the couch, eying him. “You could have told me, you know.”

Simon jumped a little at the light touch on his hand; Jace’s, reaching out to tangle their fingers together without a word. Instantly Simon felt closer to solid ground—embarrassed, a little, or something like it, but reassured. He squeezed gratefully. “I didn’t know how,” he admitted. Distantly, he wished Alec and Izzy were not here for this; it was private. But he supposed it didn’t make so much difference, and tried to ignore them. “I didn’t… How do you start that conversation?”

“Miss Manners doesn’t cover it,” Clary allowed, smiling, and Christ, the _relief_ of it—she knew, she knew and she wasn’t leaving, didn’t hate him, despise him— “But I did already know, you great big idiot. I was just waiting for you to say something.”

“You—” Simon swallowed, definitely dizzy now. “You _knew?_ Already? This _whole time?”_

Clary raised one eyebrow. “Woah. Simon, I love you, but you are not nearly as subtle as you think you are. Seriously.” She looked pointedly at Jace’s hand clutching his.

Simon flushed. “Um.” What were you supposed to say to that?

The doorbell rang suddenly, startling them all; Clary jumped a little, and the Shadowhunters all swung their heads towards the sound like hunting hounds.

“That must be the instruments,” Izzy said after a beat. “Come on, Alec, let’s let them in.” She was on her feet before she’d finished speaking, but despite her light tone Simon noticed the silver snake-bracelet on her wrist—her whip, in its ‘sheathed’ form—stirring restlessly, apparently of its own accord.

Alec was still flushed, but the red was fading rapidly from his cheeks. Without a word, he followed Izzy from the room.

“Did I miss something?” Clary asked, confused.

Jace’s hand slipped from Simon’s. “They’re worried it’s our parents.”

“What happens if it is?” Simon asked him, staring at the doorway Alec and Isabelle had vanished through.

He felt Jace shrug behind him. “It could get…unpleasant.”

“Why?” It had been Clary’s idea to throw a bit of a house-warming, to stop by a grocery store and pick up snacks so the Shadowhunters could experience some uncomplicated Light Worlder-type fun—but Simon was sure that she was just as aware as he was that no one had yet explained what had happened with the Lightwood parents. He turned around on the sofa to face his _aikane_. “What’s going on, Jace?”

Jace avoided his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Simon blinked. “Fair enough.” He tilted his head. “I don’t hear any sounds of bloodshed, though. Shall we see what’s going on?”

That was apparently acceptable, and the three of them left the candy-strewn sitting room to follow Alec and Izzy into the entrance hall.

It was, probably fortunately, _not_ the Lightwood parents. Simon stopped in the doorway, bemused by the strange sight of Isabelle directing a group of moving men along the hallway, as imperious and commanding as Cleopatra. Logic insisted that the movers couldn’t be Light Worlders—not if they’d transported the large, unfamiliar musical instruments they were carrying from the Institute to here—but Simon was more interested in the instruments themselves than the men carrying them. He recognised the outline of a piano beneath the taped-down wrapping of one of the objects, carefully directed over the carpets on what looked like a giant skateboard, but he had no idea what the other two instruments were. One looked just like a traditional guitar, but with two necks and way too many strings; the other kind of reminded him of a lute, but again, two necks, and one of them curved strangely.

“They let you take the piano?” he asked Jace.

“It wasn’t theirs,” Jace said simply. “It came with me, when—”

He stopped, and Simon realised he meant _when my father died_ , or something like it. Only Valentine hadn’t died.

It would have been so much easier if he had.

The three of them watched the instruments vanish down the corridor, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Finally, when the last of the movers disappeared into what had been dubbed the music room _(an apartment with a_ music room _)_ Clary gave herself a little shake.

“I think I should get going. I’ve still got homework to do.”

Simon shot her a scandalised expression. “Who dared give you homework on the first day back?”

They locked eyes, grinned, and chimed in unison, _“Mr. Deane.”_

“He’s the best teacher I’ve ever met,” Clary explained to Jace’s raised eyebrow. “But he demands the best of you, too.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Jace brushed his fingers over Simon’s shoulder—“I’m going to help the others,”—and headed in the direction of the music room without a backwards glance.

Simon watched him go, frowning and worried. It was clear Jace wasn’t all right, but Simon wasn’t sure how much to push, whether it might be better to let Jace open up in his own time…

Clary nudged him. “Go on, I know you’re dying to go after him. I’ll be fine.”

Simon glanced at her, and didn’t deny it. “And us?” he asked. His mouth was still a little dry. “Are we fine? Really?”

“Really really,” Clary said firmly. “It would be very hypocritical of me to be grossed out, after all that Sam/Dean fic in 10th grade.”

“And you’re never hypocritical,” Simon teased.

“I am a paragon of awesome, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I bet you don’t.” His grin softened into a smile. “I don’t deserve you.”

“No,” Clary agreed cheerfully, “but just try getting rid of me.” She hugged him. “Are you coming home tonight?”

 _“Clary!”_ Simon resisted the urge to flail, but he could feel himself flushing scarlet. Knowing that she knew put a whole new spin on that question, and from her wicked grin, she knew it full well.

“You _helped_ me write those fics, Simon, don’t tell me you’re embarrassed now—”

“I’m allowed be embarrassed when you start asking about my sex life!”

“It’s a perfectly innocent question!” she protested, clearly trying not to laugh. “I’ve got to tell mom if you’re not coming back, don’t I?”

He pretended to glare at her, not at all convinced. “I don’t know, anyway. I’ll call you if I end up staying, okay?”

“That’ll do, pig,” she agreed mildly, “that’ll do.” She blew him a kiss as she headed for the door. “And don’t let blondie keep you up all night, you’ve got a gig tomorrow.”

_“Clary Esther Lewis!”_

She laughed, and left him.

And took his smile with her; it fled his face like a passing shadow as the door closed behind her with a final-sounding _snick_. The sound reminded him of knives, and instantly he felt sick, hating that his first thought these days was always martial, violent, bloodstained.

Or maybe that was just him feeling guilty, bitter and sour, for feeling relieved to have Clary gone.

He went to sit on the stairs rather than follow Jace to the music room, and pulled out his phone just to have something to do with his hands. He flicked through Stumbleupon out of habit, but he had his own thoughts to think, fears banked by Clary’s teasing flaring to life like fires, caged in a tangle of razor wire and cursed briars.

Twice today he’d attacked Clary, or been ready to. He’d held Simiel to her throat, bared his teeth and been ready to—to what? To do something awful, something unspeakable, because for an instant she’d been a threat—no, he’d _seen_ her as a threat, which was a very different thing. Clary could never be a threat to him because Clary would never deliberately hurt him.

But it was starting to look like he was a threat to _her_ , to her safety. What if she hadn’t called his name in time, earlier? What if the monster in his head hadn’t been banished when she’d hit him with the pillow, but had interpreted it as an attack? What might he have done? Jace and Alec and Izzy—could they have stopped him? Could they have stopped him _in time?_ Was he willing to bet Clary’s life on it?

It occurred to him, horribly, that maybe Clary had been as eager to leave as he had been to see her go. Maybe her light-hearted posturing had been only that, posturing and fakery until she could get safely away from him.

He clenched his eyes shut, dragging air into lungs that were suddenly stone. _God, don’t let that be true. Don’t let her be afraid of me._

_Don’t let that fear be deserved._

He would have to talk to her, properly; not about him and Jace—although thank the Doctor that was finally out in the open—but about him, and the risk—the _threat_ —he represented now. And he had to talk to Jace, too, because whatever Clary said, Simon didn’t believe this was something as simple as PTSD. Or, could it have been two different things, two different triggers? The first time, he’d been terrified; the second…

He thought back to it; the ice-cold flash of thought, faster and purer than mere words; the awareness of how vulnerable Jace felt, the understanding that Clary was its cause… Only it had been a Clary stripped of all association, in his mind; Clary as a meaningless stranger who was making Jace unhappy, making him _hurt_ —

Darkness detonated in his chest with a silent roar; Simon hissed, the phone slipping from suddenly nerveless fingers as his vision was washed in shining ebony—not blind but shadow-sighted, lines and angles transcribed in obsidian and silver and bloody crimson, the perception of a creature born to darkness. His ears were full of the crash of surf and he knew it for black water, without thinking; black waves on red sand, and he was so full of _rage_ , pure unholy wrath that Jace should be hurt, hurting. He felt himself stand and his shoulders were weighted down, the room was strobing around him, black-white-black-white-black-white-black—

 _No, no, Jace is safe!_ a distant voice cried. _There is no threat—_

Black and white paused, snarled, crashed together in a blinding tangle of lightning and burning oil. Salt and frost on his tongue, their tongue, xyr tongue, anthrax pulsing in xyr arteries and razors pushing from xyr fingertips like claws, in xyr gums like fangs, ready to hunt down the thing that had hurt xyr _aikane_ —

_NO!_

A scream to drown out the sound of the waves; xe spun, disorientated, colour leeching back into xyr vision and xyr wings dissolving into ashes—

And Simon’s body tripped on the stair and crashed down, and _there,_ he was _here_ , every sharp spike of pain anchoring him in his skin, carving him real for fragments of seconds—but only for seconds; he was blinking in and out like a flickering bulb, Simon and the Other, black and white and blue and gold as he—xe— _they_ crumpled at the foot of the stairs, clutching their head as it tried to split open, a sun come alight in their skull and it was too big, too much, searing him-xem-them and he-xe was screaming, the unbearable fucking _agony_ of being at war with himself—xyrself—them _selves_ —

If he lost if he lost if he lost this _thing_ was going to go after Clary—

_“Simon!”_

He couldn’t see, his body was shaking, convulsing, trying to rip itself apart and blood in his mouth and wings beating under his skin, wings with feathers of fire, feathers of swords and ice and bone—there were hands on his skin, turning him over, trying to make him be still calling his name but he couldn’t help them, head hands wrists arms hips thighs shins feet all jerking-spasming, and there were hands on xem, restraining holding back and _agé, no!_ Xe flung them off with a snarl, blood dripping from xyr lips, and saw—

_—a citadel of crystal-diamond-glass like a lotus blossom, floating in the sky atop an island of white marble while a flock of figures, some winged and some not, swoop and dive around it like a shoal of rainbows—_

_—a wave of demons kneeling to xem, legion upon legion of them, and they name xem_ Adokaz-Aoi _,_ Nazksad-Enaikat-dë _—prince of stars, sword of the King, and xe sings the truth of it back to them—_

_—worlds shattered and burned, crushed between armies of fire and ice, mortals drowning in the ichor that comes storming down out of the skies above them—_

_—sunshine in a lavender sky, wings feathered in black and white streaking past xem with a whoop of joy, the long fan-tipped tail almost slapping xyr face. “Catch me if you can, Toltorg!” ae calls, taunting playfully. Black scales like dark diamonds flash from beneath leg coverings of violet silk, and ae dives, fearless as any immortal. Xe twists mid-air and plunges after, and their third vertex is laughing at them both, amethyst sun calling sapphire fire from vir blue hide, vir hawk’s-eye dappled wings—_

_—A warscape, a dying sun choked out by twisted songs and the earth churned to bloody mud beneath the talons of countless inferni, and xe screams down starfire from beyond this world but it is not enough, not enough to save what must be saved,_ who _must be saved—_

_They are all going to die here—_

A sharp stinging sensation burst somewhere close by—no, not just close but against his skin, on his face—he had a face, skin, a body, the pain drew boundaries around his self and Simon blinked, back and human and aware of himself again—his surroundings—

 His surroundings—

He was sitting at the base of the staircase, his arms outflung towards—towards Alec and Isabelle, and both of them stood still as stone, as if they had met Medusa’s glance mid-stride; Alec with a seraph blade alight in his hand, Izzy’s whip half-uncoiled from around her wrist, hanging limply at her side. Only their faces were animated, caught somewhere between fear, real fear, and shock, and awe, and disbelief—

“No, Simon, look, look at me,” and Simon saw him, belatedly; Jace was kneeling beside him, cradling Simon’s face and he must have been the one to slap Simon back to his senses because his voice was shaking, and his face, his eyes— “Are you all right? Can you hear me now?”

 _‘Now’; could I not hear you before—what’s happening—what_ happened _—_

Simon searched for his mouth. It took him a while to find it; when he did, it tasted like blood. “I… I can hear you.”

Jace smiled a little, but his gaze was still afraid, worried. “Good, that’s good.” He swallowed; when he spoke, he sounded out each word carefully. “Do you think you can let Alec and Izzy go?”

Simon stared at him, confused. “What…?”

“You’re holding them, _aikane_ ,” Jace said, low. “Like you held me before, do you remember? Through their runes.”

It felt like a long time before Simon could ascertain the truth of that; it felt so natural, so easy, that he couldn’t feel the effort of it. But Jace was right; once Simon looked for it, listened for it, he eventually found his hold on Jace’s siblings. It was like and unlike holding Jace; they sounded different, each of them, the same instruments—the same Marks—sounding together in different ways, making separate choirs. Here and there was a note or chorus added or absent, where someone had a rune the others didn’t, or lacked one the other two must have had. It was hypnotising, now that he could hear it, was listening to it; Jace, and Alec, and Isabelle, the three of them like living songs…

With effort, Simon…loosened his grip, like relaxing a fist, and Alec and Izzy both made quickly stifled sounds; a gasp of relief, a soft hiss. Simon’s hands fell to his lap, and his head bowed, abruptly exhausted. He fell forward against Jace’s shoulder and felt Jace catch him, those familiar arms _(humming with_ desviar _and_ voyance _and_ enkeli _)_ coming up around him to hold him tight, and safe…

Distantly, he could hear voices, Alec’s and Isabelle’s and others he didn’t know. But before he could lift his head again, he was gone.

***

“How long,” Alec asked, “has he been able to do that?”

Izzy rubbed her arms, suppressing a shudder. Jace, who was gently wiping the blood from Simon’s lips and chin with a damp cloth, said nothing. He had not let either of them help him carry Simon here, to his, Simon’s, new room, and Izzy was silently grateful. She was not sure she could have brought herself to touch Simon, just now, not even for Jace.

 _Simon struggling on the floor, screaming through the blood bubbling from between his teeth. One of the werewolf movers bending over him, trying to hold him down; Jace kneeling on Simon’s other side, calling his name, frantic, stele out to heal whatever-this-is. Simon bucks, writhes; without warning he throws off the werewolf, hurls him across the hall like a doll and Izzy is running, Alec beside her, the stele flies from Jace’s fingers to embed quivering in a wall and Simon sits up like a switchblade flicking free. He flings up his hands and she feels it in every Mark, every rune locking in place, locking_ her _in place and Simon’s eyes are black and blind, blood smeared around his snarling mouth…_

 _“Jace,”_ Alec snapped. “I felt it; you were only surprised for a second. You’ve seen this before. _When?”_

Jace dipped the cloth into the bowl of warm water Izzy had brought him when he’d asked. “He’s never moved a stele before,” he said finally. He cleaned a thread of blood from Simon’s jaw.

“But the runes? He _held_ us, Jace! I couldn’t move!”

“I couldn’t either,” Isabelle said quietly. “Only my face, and my left hand.” She swallowed sourness.

She had never thought of her Marks as a weakness before, a vulnerability. The idea of it turned her stomach, spun her world upside-down. She glanced down at the _voyance_ on her right hand. _They’re supposed to be our strength._

And in that moment, she knew why Jace hadn’t told anyone.

“Because those are the only parks of you unMarked,” Jace said softly. Resignedly. He dropped the cloth in the bowl and turned on the bed to face them. “Renwicks. The first time… I think the first time was at Renwicks.”

 _“Renwicks?”_ Alec demanded, incredulous. “You’ve known since _Renwicks_ , and you didn’t tell us?”

“Because of the Clave,” Izzy said, looking up from her hand to meet Jace’s eyes. He looked so tired. “That’s why, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“What in the Angel’s name does the Clave have to do with it?” Alec looked from Jace to Izzy and back again. “Well?” His tone warned that Jace had better have a damn good explanation.

Izzy didn’t blame him, but she’d seen the scope of it now. “Alec, _think._ What would the Clave do if they learned there was someone who could control them through their runes?”

“Train him,” Alec said without missing a beat.

Jace actually laughed, brokenly; Izzy just snorted. “Let me rephrase that: what would the Clave do if they learned there was someone who could control them through their runes, _and who would not take the Oath?_ This is Simon we’re talking about,” she added when he opened his mouth to answer. “We all know he’s never going to be Dedicated.”

Alec hesitated.

“They’d kill him,” Jace whispered. “Alec, they’d execute him in a heartbeat.”

Alec didn’t deny it. He could see it as clearly as Isabelle could: their greatest strength, become a terrible, irrevocable vulnerability, a _weakness_. If Simon could hold them frozen, could he move them, like dolls, like puppets? Could he walk a Shadowhunter off a cliff, or into a pool? Could he force them to raise a blade to their throats and cut? Izzy had no runes on her fingers, but the _voyance_ on her right hand crossed the tendons for her digits; she would not want to bet that Simon couldn’t manipulate them if he chose to, make her hold a weapon.

“That’s why you kept it a secret?” Alec asked finally. “Because you thought we’d tell the Clave?”

“I wanted to spare you the choice between loyalties,” Jace said quietly.

“I’m your _parabatai,”_ Alec said. “What you endure, I endure. You’re not supposed to spare me. You’re supposed to trust me.”

“I do trust you!” Jace was suddenly on his feet, and Izzy had never seen their brother cry but Jace looked anguished, grieved that Alec could think such a thing. “I know what you would have chosen, of course I know—just like I know it would have hurt you to keep this from the Clave. You honour them, as you _should_ —”

“My first loyalty is to _you,”_ Alec said. “As it should be, as it’s always been. You say you wanted to spare us the choice, but it wouldn’t have _been_ a choice—Fallen damn you, Jace, a choice between you and the world is no choice at all!”

Jace stared at him, and Izzy wondered what was being said between the words, through the bond her brothers shared. She was tired of having to wonder, she realised, watching their expressions shift and change like a lake beneath a storm; and yet, she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to step into that silence with them. The only way to break a _parabatai_ bond, once forged, was to cut it out of your own skin, slice so deep no trace of the Mark remained. And even that almost never worked. No one else could do it for you, even if you agreed to let them try; you had to will the bond gone, and wield the blade yourself, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred you would still feel your _parabatai_ ’s soul merged with yours, as impossible to separate as two flames that had become one.

Her declaration this morning— _we’re all three of us_ agelai _now_ —had been a gauntlet thrown down, a ploy to stay by Jace’s side while their parents decided his fate. If she made it true—what if she hated it, once it was done? To never have privacy again…

It would mean never being alone, either.

“If you’re done angsting over how devoted but misunderstood you both are,” she said tartly, “can we get back to the part where Simon has superpowers? What can he _do_ , Jace?”

Jace sat back down, glancing at Simon to check that he was still sleeping. “His _iratze_ s held when mine didn’t,” he said, and none of them needed that spelled out; they all remembered the battle with Abbadon, and how close Alec had come to dying in it. The Greater Demon’s poison had negated the healing runes Jace had tried to draw, but Simon’s… Simon’s had kept Alec alive long enough for Magnus to heal him. “At Renwicks, he… He broke the Portal there.”

Isabelle stared at him. _“Simon_ broke it?” Jace had told them—told everyone—that it had been Valentine, destroying his escape route before anyone could follow him through it.

 _“How?”_ Alec asked.

Jace shrugged helplessly. “He screamed.”

“He _screamed?”_ Izzy repeated incredulously. “He destroyed a Portal—by _screaming?”_

“He has an angel in him,” Alec said slowly. Clearly struggling to accept what he was hearing, but no doubt he had the added evidence of Jace’s memories to convince him. “There’s no real telling _what_ he can do.” He glanced at Jace. “Would the Clave really execute an angel?” he asked suddenly.

The sheer horror of the idea silenced them all for a moment.

“They couldn’t,” Alec said finally. “They _couldn’t_. It would be—I can’t imagine a greater blasphemy.”

“They couldn’t do it _knowingly,”_ Jace corrected. “Or openly, if they knew. But if they said that Simon was possessed by a demon instead of an angel? Who would protest?”

“Would Raziel let them?” They both turned to look at her, but Izzy didn’t retract the question, even if she felt naïve for asking it. “No, really. If they tried—if they tried to kill an _angel_ —wouldn’t Raziel stop them?”

“Maybe.” Jace sounded doubtful.

“He might not have to,” Alec said grimly. “You saw what happened downstairs. Imagine if we’d been trying to hurt him.” He looked at Jace. “He threw that werewolf across the hall, and _he_ didn’t have any Marks.”

Izzy rubbed her chest. It had been like—she didn’t know what it had been like; like a wave crashing against her, or being caught in the blast zone of a bomb, all of her Marks thrumming and vibrating like glass about to shatter. Jace had bolted out of the room; Izzy and Alec had taken one look at each other and followed him, drawing weapons as they went, and one of the werewolves positioning Jace’s piano had run with them.

It had been… _interesting_ , trying to convince the wolves not to talk about what they’d seen and heard, after. She hoped they would keep their mouths shut, but she had a sick feeling that even the threat of Shadowhunter fury wasn’t going to keep this story from being all over the city by the weekend. It might even help it spread.

“I don’t want to bet on it,” Jace said. “On divine intervention, _or_ that Simon’s angel could protect him. Today was the first time I’ve seen him hold two people at once, and the Clave can call on a lot more than two warriors.”

“We’re not going to tell anyone, Jace,” Izzy said, rolling her eyes. “I thought we’d already agreed on that.”

Alec nodded agreement. “Is that all?” he asked. “Everything you’ve seen Simon do?”

Jace cocked his head, considering. “He can move Simiel, sometimes,” he said after a moment.

Alec made a dismissive gesture, but Jace said “No, not like that,” before he could speak, and Alec’s eyes went wide.

To Izzy, who couldn’t see whatever he’d shown Alec, Jace said, “I don’t mean it nudges into his grasp when he needs it, like any bonded blade. I’ve seen it fly up from the floor into his hand, from three, maybe four feet away.”

“Can he do it on command?” Izzy asked. It seemed the next logical question. “Have you two been practising all this in private?”

Jace shook his head.

“Well, why not?” Izzy demanded, exasperated. “For Raziel’s sake, Jace!”

“I thought it might be smarter to make sure he could handle a sword before we started in on the celestial powers!” Jace said. “Walk before you can run, Izzy!”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that sentiment from you before,” Alec commented.

“Alec, shut up if you’re not going to help,” Izzy snapped. She turned back to Jace. “The angel’s possessing him for a reason, isn’t it? I doubt it just wants to be ignored. If it’s given Simon these powers, then he’s probably meant to be using them.”

“Let’s take this somewhere else,” Jace said. He looked down at Simon, who was fast asleep but wouldn’t remain so if the discussion grew any more heated, and no one argued.

Izzy’s room was closest, so they went there, Jace shutting his bedroom door quietly behind them.

“Do we know that it _has_ given Simon its powers?” Alec asked. He found a space to lean against the wall, nearest the door; Izzy settled on her new bed, her back pressed to the headboard; and Jace hovered near the window, drawn tight and restless. “Maybe what you saw wasn’t Simon using those powers, but the angel taking him over for a moment or two. We’re only guessing that it’s made its abilities available for Simon to use; it could be the angel, not Simon, doing those things you’ve seen.”

“It could be,” Jace admitted after a pause. “I don’t think so, but I can’t prove you wrong.”

“Why don’t we just _ask_ it?” Izzy refused to quail from their shocked looks. “What? Why not? Has anyone tried talking to it at all? Magnus?” she asked Alec.

Who shook his head. “Not as far as I know…”

“Then why don’t we ask it what it wants?” It was so obvious; why hadn’t they considered this before? “If it’ll talk to us, we can get proof it’s an angel. The Clave won’t be able to hurt Simon then, even if they find out. And…” _And, it’s an_ angel. The thought of actually talking to one, communicating with it… They’d been working so hard the last few weeks trying to get everything ready for the Inquisitor that Isabelle had not had time to consider what it really meant, that Simon had an angel inside him. It had touched Alec, even if Alec didn’t remember it; the black gloves on Alec’s hands hid the _si_ _̱_ _mádi angélou_ that proved it, the celestial signature of an opalescent six-pointed star, emblazoned on his palm like a jewel. It was _here_ , on earth with them.

An _angel_. An angel like Raziel. For all they knew, it might even _be_ Raziel—she doubted it, but they couldn’t be completely sure, could they?

But Alec was shaking his head. “I thought the same thing,” he said. “But, Izzy—Jonathan Shadowhunter is the only Nephilim who’s ever managed to talk to an angel. Everyone else who has tried—the angel always destroys them. They don’t want to talk to us.”

“They don’t want to be _summoned,”_ Izzy argued. “And bound in a summoning circle. Would you want to be? But this one’s already here.”

“Could it hurt to try?” Jace asked softly.

Alec stared at him. “Yes! Yes, it could hurt! Did you not hear me just say that everyone who’s tried has been destroyed? Smited, Jace! People who try to talk to angels get smited!”

“I think the past tense of ‘smite’ is ‘smote’,” Izzy said archly.

“Now who’s not helping?” Alec asked.

Ignoring him, Izzy looked at Jace. He was rubbing his thumb over the windowsill, lost in his own thoughts. “I understand why you kept it secret,” she told him. “But Jace—the Inquisitor could arrive any minute now. And you know there’s no way we can keep her away from Simon—it’s going to be hard enough making sure she doesn’t find out about Clary. What if—” She hesitated, not knowing what to call it. “—what happened downstairs happens again? In front of mother and father, or the Inquisitor?”

“What do you suggest?” Jace’s voice emerged harsh and rough from his throat, almost angry, and although she knew the anger wasn’t directed at her, Isabelle still felt it like a lash. “Asking the angel to _pretty please_ behave itself for a week or two? If it doesn’t kill us all outright for daring to talk to it?”

“If you don’t want to risk that, then train him!” Izzy snapped. “Find some way for him to control his—or the angel’s—powers, and do it fast! Don’t take it out on me just because you were busy sticking your head in the sand, hoping this would go away! If you’d told us before, we could have done something about it earlier!”

“I was trying to keep us all safe!” Jace shouted, whirling on her, and even Alec started at the anguished rage spilling out of him in waves. “If I was the only one who knew, then I was the only one who could be punished! And now look—” He made an angry, aborted gesture, “—now it’s a _conspiracy_ , a nest of anarchist Shadowhunters keeping vital information from the Clave—they’ll exile you and Alec and with my father, I’ll be lucky if they kill me before I have to watch him die—”

His voice broke. Izzy stared, speechless, as Alec was suddenly across the room, enfolding Jace into his arms as Jace’s shoulders shook and shook. Izzy could hear him gasping against Alec’s chest, horrible, sandpapered breaths that sounded like they hurt, sounded like razor wire being dragged from her brother’s lungs—

Alec met her eyes. In that moment, they didn’t need a _parabatai_ bond; they both knew that last _him_ had not been Valentine.

Alec pressed his lips to Jace’s hair, his eyes closing, and Izzy imagined the wave of warmth and love and reassurance he had to be wrapping around Jace like a blanket, like a wardspell, the wordless promises he must be making— _we won’t let that happen, you’re not alone with this now, we’ll help and it **will not** happen—_

Damn privacy, Izzy thought. She would take the _parabatai_ oath, and this was why; so she could give Jace the same reassurance that Alec could give him, soul-deep and all-encompassing. Because to apologise unbonded was to be hampered by clumsy, useless words that could not touch her brother’s hurt, could not hope to convey how truly sorry she was, and that was no longer good enough. She wanted, _needed,_ to write her apology in pure emotion, so Jace could know without doubt, could _feel_ how much she hadn’t meant to hurt him, how much she regretted that she had.

She would never have to depend on words again—with the bond, she could battle their sorrows and fears the way she battled monsters, hunting them past the depths mere words could go. She could keep them from ever hurting again.

But that was just selfishness on her own part; there was more to it than that, more important reasons for turning three into one. Their trio had balanced just fine back when things were simple, but the life they shared had grown so much darker since then, so much more complicated; the still summer lake they used to sail on had become a river too deep and dangerous to be forded, strewn with submerged rocks and white-water rapids. She watched Jace struggle to compose himself and knew his fears were not misplaced; any misstep now could see them all drowned, with Simon and maybe even Clary with them. They needed the added advantage of a true _agela_ , of _being_ a true _agela_ , to navigate this, to minimise the risks and threats they faced.

This entire discussion could have taken place in mere seconds mind-to-mind, if they’d been _agelai_. That instantaneous understanding would serve them like a seraph blade in whatever trials lay ahead; it was a weapon they couldn’t afford to pass over, but Alec and Jace would never insist she take it from its sheath. Not even to save them.

She had to be the one to choose.

“Simon’s not going to die,” she said, knowing she was echoing Alec’s silent assurances, hating the need to speak aloud. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. “And we’re not going to fail. We’re going to become an _agela_.”

That got their attention. Jace whirled on her, and no, his eyes were dry but they were wild, with glimpses of forest-fires in the gold. “Did you listen to a word I just said? Alec’s already bound too close to me; becoming an _agela_ would just drag you deeper into punishment with us!”

“I’m already in,” she said sharply, “and I’m not going anywhere. You think I’d cut myself away from you to save myself? Do you really think so little of me?”

Alec put a hand on Jace’s shoulder, silencing whatever he might have said. “Of course he doesn’t, Izzy. That’s not what he meant.”

She let it go. “Either way, he’s wrong. Becoming an _agela_ won’t drag me down; it’ll pull you up. It doesn’t matter if you murder the Inquisitor in front of half the Clave; they’ll bend over backwards to preserve a real _agela_.” She pointed a crimson-nailed finger at her boys. “That means no imprisoning any of us, and definitely no executions. Nothing that would impact our effectiveness as hunters.”

After a beat, Alec quoted softly, “ ‘The Shadowhunter is trained in the art of attacking multiple foes, but multiple Shadowhunters cannot attack the same foe without great difficulty. The solution to this are the _parabatai_ and _parastathentes_ bonds, by which two Shadowhunters may fight together as one.

“ ‘The sum of these bonds is the _agela_ , which is a greater force against the darkness than any of its parts alone...’ ”

“Yes, we’ve all read the Codex, Alec, thank you,” Jace interrupted.

“Then you should realise that Izzy’s right,” Alec said, unperturbed. _“Agelae_ are too rare to deliberately destroy. _Parabatai_ are already prized, but an _agela_ …”

He didn’t need to finish the thought. For years they’d all endured Hodge and their parents pressuring Izzy to complete the triangle, to turn a precious _parabatai_ bond into a priceless _agela_. Every Nephilim knew it: if Shadowhunters were flames in the darkness, and _parabatai_ shining stars, then an _agela_ was a sun, a light no demon could stand against and survive. They were the greatest weapon in the Nephilim arsenal—and the rarest.

No one would touch them, no one _could_ touch them, if they completed the bond. They would be too valuable, too highly prized. _Agelae_ sent Greater Demons to the True Death, and held besieged passes against ravening armies, and had their names writ into legend; they were not imprisoned, or exiled, or hung as traitors. They couldn’t be.

No one spoke for minutes, and Isabelle tried not to wonder if Alec and Jace were conversing on their own, discussing the pros and cons without her. They wouldn’t do that.

“You shouldn’t have to do this,” Jace said at last. “Becoming our _parabatai_ for politics—” His voice was rough, and disgusted. “I won’t let you be compelled into this.”

“Oh, shut up and stop being a drama queen!” Izzy said exasperatedly. “Do you think I’d offer if I wasn’t willing? If I didn’t want it?” She frowned at him, half-playful. “Protest much more, and I’ll think you don’t _want_ to be _agelai_ with me.”

“We’ve wanted nothing more for years,” Alec said simply.

Jace looked at her, and his eyes were searching. Soon, if she had her way, he wouldn’t need to look; he would simply _know_ anything and everything that she felt. “Are you sure?”  he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

And despite everything they grinned at each other, all three of them, so bright and warm that Izzy felt it as if the Mark were already emblazoned on her chest.

“It won’t help Simon,” she pointed out, because it needed to be said. Because they’d not come in here to discuss _agelae_ , but what to do about Jace’s _erastes_ , and for that they’d come up with no solutions yet.

There should have been a party, a celebration of their decision to form an _agela_ , but if they had it at all it would have to wait.

“I can ask Magnus what he thinks about talking to Simon’s angel,” Alec said doubtfully, hesitantly. Writ across his face was his unwillingness to do just that, to interrupt the warlock’s grieving for someone else’s problems. “And look for hints in the Institute library.” He paused. “If they’ll let me in.”

No one asked who ‘they’ were. “They have to,” Izzy said. “It’s the Law—an Institute’s resources belong to all Shadowhunters.”

Jace brushed a hand through his hair, restlessly. “In the meantime, we’ll try and train him,” he said. “If it’s not the angel working through him—if he just needs to learn control—then practice should help.”

If it wasn’t the angel. If Simon only needed to learn control. If there was time for enough practice to make a difference, before the Inquisitor arrived, before Simon did something they couldn’t hide or explain away.

Izzy took a deep breath. There was nothing she, or they, could do to eradicate those _ifs_. They would just have to pray, and focus on what they _could_ do. Speaking of which… “Let’s do it tonight,” she said. She let herself think about the enormity of what she—they—were doing; faced it in her mind without flinching, without regret. “Once Simon wakes up. He can witness for us.”

They were smart, her boys. They didn’t gainsay her. They knew better.

***

 _There is a room like a cavern, lit with_ _glowing runes, curlicues of gold and crystal set lovingly into the smooth stone. Their light falls upon the countless shelves, upon the books and scrolls archived here, the discs and tablets and chips, the memory-gems and data-banks. The librarians—for this is a library, albiet the like of which has never been seen on Terran earth—are black chrome and gilt, bipedal golems with serene faces and delicate, many-fingered hands on their four arms. They use their wings to dust the precious volumes in their care._

_They bow their heads politely as xe passes them by._

_Beside xem is one who is kin and progenitor. She wears matter easily, wields flesh and breath and biology like one born to it—which she was. Xe is less comfortable, feels almost claustrophobic in this suit of meat; the body’s pulse is so_ loud _, the bones heavy, clumsy anchors weighing xem down. It is comforting to glance over at her and see her true form doubled over and under her current aspect: a boundless, calligraphic, helixing spiral of mana, energy etched onto the fabric of unspace in colours-sounds-extants no mortal can ever dream of. The perception of it is a reassurance that xe, too, is still xyrself._

_She—she has taken on gender, comfortable enough to do so; xe has foregone the added complication of such a thing—leads xem between two towers of shelves to a graceful open space, a glade in this forest of knowledge. Two mortals await them, debating over holograms of sigils and runic alphabets that dance back and forth between them; as xe and xyr kin approach, one tosses a glowing image at the other, who pulls its edges to enlarge it and make a correction._

_Xyr progenitor makes a sound in her throat—_ a cough, Simon recognises— _and smiles as the mortals recognise their presence._ _She introduces xem in the language of this world, which is looping and soft-edged; the word she uses means ‘life come from my life’, which can mean so many things. “And these,” she says, gesturing to the strangely tangible mortals, “are the greatest of my students; Irio-dainurma-só-tehirte, of the planet Azrath in the G-rsam system, and Esirath na Fejtaran-no, of Sylvistrae.”_

 _“Call me Nurma,” the larger one says, turning the complex rolling trills of its name into something xe can hope to get xyr new mouth around. Nurma is eight or nine feet tall, as Simon would measure, with large wings feathered in black and white; it has hair, which not all these flesh-and-blood creatures do, a silver cascade of it falling almost to the silk wrap that hides its legs. Its head and torso are—_ human, Simon thinks— _but its arms are covered in black scales, and its long tail ends in a fan of glimmering scale-feathers. “Only kin attempt the whole mouthful.”_

_“Nurma,” xe tries, rolling the sound of it around the fleshy tongue, the stony teeth._

_Nurma pokes out its tongue and bites the tip gently; its teeth are white and gleaming. It holds the pose for a moment, then releases its tongue to speak. “You’ll get it.”_

_“My usename is Sirath,” the other mortal says. It is smaller than Nurma by a foot or two, and is clearly of another kind;_ _its hide is dark blue and scaled, with a mane of quills around its head and draconic wings that shimmer all shades of black and blue and green. More quills and spines edge its shoulders, run down its back to the end of its dagger-tipped tail, and where the taller creature—Nurma—wears a skirt of purple and gold, Sirath has only a belt of azure discs around its narrow hips._ _“I am intrigued to meet another of the Iyrin. Will you be working with us on our project?”_

_*Perhaps.* Xe sends the emotion-thought directly to the minds of the mortals, already tired with clumsy speech, the impreciseness of verbal language. *I have other responsibilities, but this is a task whose objective means much to me. I wish to give what help I can.*_

_They start slightly when xyr mind brushes theirs, but both recover quickly. They have been working with xyr progenitor, after all. “We will be glad to have you,” Sirath says, touching triple-knuckled fingers to its lips, conveying some nuance xe does not understand. Perhaps it is a gesture specific to Sirath’s culture, like Nurma’s tongue-biting? “But what are we to call you?”_

_This, at least, is a simple thing, simple enough to be said aloud. “I am—”_

Simon jerked awake as if he’d been dropped from a height. He lay still, staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling without seeing it, trying to get over the vertigo lingering in his lizard-brain. His heart was pounding.

He could hardly breathe for the crippling, sourceless anguish threatening to sweep him under.

Mindlessly, he rolled onto his side under the sheets, drawing his knees up to his chest and tucking his head in, squeezing his eyes shut like a child. In seconds his throat was burned raw with suppressed sobs, and tears smeared across his cheeks like acid. There was no reason for it, he had no idea why he hurt so much and that confusion kept him silent, but it felt like—if his mom had died, it might have hurt this much; if he’d lost Clary or Jace to death, he would have felt this urge to hide away under blankets and cry until his shattered heart drowned in salt. His chest felt too tight, his lungs encircled by crushing iron bands so that he couldn’t get a breath, hitching and choking and the _ache_ in him, the sheer fucking _grief_ keening through his soul like a banshee’s wail—

_I watched them die, I couldn’t stop it—_

With effort, he dragged his mind back towards reality. No one was dead. Jace had been saved from Valentine, Alec from Abbadon’s poison, Jocelyn from her chains; Clary had escaped Renwicks with only bruises and Izzy had sailed through it all without a scratch. Simon’s mom was in hospital, but she was stable—if she wasn’t improving, at least she’d shown no signs of getting worse. Everyone was fine.

It felt like hours before that certainty— _everyone’s fine, everyone’s okay_ —worked its way into his heart. Bit by bit, as if suspicious of the reassurances, his body relaxed, the constriction on his lungs easing in tiny increments. Gradually he stopped shaking, the tension bleeding out of him, and he slumped into the mattress, against the pillow, drained and exhausted.

His throat still ached when he finally became aware of his surroundings. He sat up slowly, blinking at his fuzzy vision; some of it was lingering tears, but the rest could be blamed on his missing glasses. He fumbled for the blurry nightstand, and found the familiar frames beneath his fingers.

When he could see again, he found himself looking around a beautiful bedroom like none he’d ever seen before. The walls and floor were all the exact same shade of dark, forest-shadow green, almost black in the dim light, except for the wall to Simon’s right, which was solid glass. Twilight spilled through the wall-length window, dusky shadows entwined with urban neon pooling on the bare floor, on the low padded window-seat running the length of the glass and the silky sheets tangled around Simon’s legs. The bed was set low, too, and had no frame—it was just a thick mattress a few inches smaller than the platform it rested on, the whole leaving Simon less than a foot off the floor. The only furniture was the short nightstand beside the bed and a bookcase that looked as though it had been made of driftwood, smoothed by waves and pleasingly asymmetrical, but when he got up to explore he found an almost-camouflaged door that led to a connected bathroom, and another that opened on a walk-in wardrobe empty of anything but hangers.

No, wait. Frowning, he searched for a light-switch, and when he found it the light revealed a familiar coat of black silk at the back of the wardrobe; his _cóada_ , the Shadowhunter formalwear he’d worn to Jace’s Dedication ceremony.

He stood staring at the glittering _adamas_ buttons for a long, numb moment.

He closed the door on it with a sharp, convulsive motion, breathing hard and not sure why, not sure how to name the emotion seeing the _cóada_ elicited in him.

He’d seen enough. He left the room, fingertips automatically searching out his weapons as he closed the door behind him. Sure enough, whoever had laid him in bed had left his knives untouched; only the boot knife was missing, gone with the converse sneakers that had been modified to hold and hide the sheath. He smiled a little; only a Shadowhunter would think it better to wake up armed than sleep comfortably unencumbered by your armoury.

The apartment was dark. Simon stopped and opened doors, but didn’t find anyone. There was a bedroom done up in black and crimson, with ebony-framed mirrors on the walls and a four-poster bed buried in thick cushions; the next was blue and white with bookshelves built into the walls and a beautiful wooden desk beneath the window; the third had been decorated in shades of black and grey and silver, and already had two knives embedded in the target hung on the wall. They all smelled of fresh paint, and they were all empty.

He made his way down the stairs, wondering how Alec and the others had managed to get their rooms decorated so quickly—or were there vampire decorators? It was late evening now, dark enough, he supposed, that vampires could have come to paint everything super-quickly. Maybe. It was a hilarious mental image, either way, and it had him almost grinning by the time he registered the strains of piano music coming from an unexplored corridor.

The lower floor wasn’t so dark; warm light came from the doorway leading into the sitting room, and the electric lights in the entrance hall were turned low but bright enough for Simon to spot his phone at the base of the stairs, where he’d dropped it during his… His fit. Or whatever that had been.

A fragment of his dream flashed through his mind as he stooped to pick up the phone; an alien’s magpie wings, lazuli fingers with too many joints pressed to sapphire lips. A pang echoed through his breast in the wake of the images; it tightened his throat for an instant, for a breath.

And then it was gone, and he shook his head clear and turned away from the sitting room, from the quiet hum of conversation there. He followed the music into the dark, instead, down the unlit corridor to the music room like a reverse Eurydice, following Orpheus into the Underworld instead of out of it. But Simon was already in the Shadow World, had been caught in it from the moment he pushed open the door to another music room, half a city away and more than a month gone, and he didn’t hesitate to open this one now.

For an instant, it was as if he’d travelled back in time; there was Jace at the piano, the very same instrument he’d been playing when Simon woke from a Ravenor’s venom, and here was Simon, standing in the doorway and taken aback by Jace’s gilded beauty, by the magic unspooling from beneath his fingers on the black and white keys…

His _aikane_ ’s graceful hands paused, and the music fell silent. He didn’t turn around, but Simon could hear his smile as Jace asked, “Alec? Is that you?”

“Wrong again,” Simon said softly. When Jace turned on the piano stool, he found Simon smiling back at him.

But the warmth in Jace’s face faded all too quickly, replaced by the concern and exhaustion that was becoming far too familiar these days. He started to speak, but Simon got there first. “Is everyone all right?”

 _Did I hurt anyone?_ His memory of what had happened before he passed out was patchy, interspersed with strange, fantastical visions like a montage of fantasy films; a nightmarish battlefield, a dream of flight, a building like a crystal church or palace, but hovering in the sky… He had no idea how to tell apart the hallucinations from what had actually happened.

“Everyone’s fine. One of the werewolves was thrown, but he was only bruised.” Jace turned back to the piano. One-handedly, absently, he started to pick out a new tune.

“Werewolves?” _What werewolves_ , Simon wanted to ask, but before he could the song snagged him, lassoed his heart with a silver chain and pulled. It ached, not with the anguish of his after-dream, but with something far softer—déjà vu, wistful and sweet and sore, like a healing bruise.

“What song is that?” he asked. His voice emerged a whisper.

 _“The Colours,”_ Jace said. “It’s one of the teaching songs for little children—sometimes it gets used as a lullaby.”

Simon walked over and sat down next to him on the stool, careful not to touch the keys. He could play a little—well enough to pick out a nursery rhyme or two—but he didn’t want to accidentally interrupt Jace’s playing. “A Nephilim song, you mean?” He nudged Jace’s knee with his. “Sing it for me?”

Softly, Jace murmured the words, not so much singing as reciting, giving it the cadence of a nursery rhyme or skipping song;

 

“ _Black for hunting through the night,_

_For death and mourning the colour’s white,_

_Gold for a bride in her wedding gown,_

_And red to call enchantment down._

_“White silk when our bodies burn,_

_Blue banners when the lost return._

_Flame for the birth of a Nephilim,_

_And to wash away our sins._

_“Gray for knowledge best untold,_

_Bone for those who don’t grow old._

_Saffron lights the victory march,_

_Green will mend our broken hearts._

_“Silver for the demon towers,_

_And bronze to summon wicked powers.”_

 

Simon closed his eyes as Jace’s voice wrapped around him, but he didn’t see the colours from the song, or the pictures the verses evoked. Instead every word increased the wistful almost-sadness gathered behind his ribcage, bittersweet like dark chocolate, and as the simple tune drifted like mist through the room he almost thought he could hear another voice echoed in Jace’s, older and deeper. The sense of it was so fragile that Simon tried hard not to focus on it, lest it burst like a soap bubble, but instead let it whisper in the back of his mind, half-real and maybe-imagined.

When it was over, they sat in silence for a minute.

“It’s like I’ve heard it before,” Simon said finally. He looked at Jace, hesitating to acknowledge whose voice he’d heard behind Jace’s. “Did Valentine ever sing to you?”

Jace’s expression was unreadable. “Sometimes,” he said. “When I was very young.” His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “It’s not unusual for Shadowhunters to retain memories from their first year. Maybe you remember him singing it to you.”

“It might have been you,” Simon said. “Luke told me you used to sing to me all the time.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realised they’d been the wrong thing to say, horrifically wrong. It was one thing to know, in the same vague way that he knew the Himalayas were cold, that he and Jace were brothers; it was a fact, but distant and unimportant, the truth of it too abstract to matter to their lives. It was something else entirely to think about toddler Jace singing to baby Simon. That was _real_ , it made it real, and for a second Simon was almost dizzy with it, split between two overlapping realities; the one in which Jace was his lover, and the one where they were brothers…

“Werewolves?” he asked again, viciously shoving away thoughts of brothers, siblings, big brothers singing lullabies for their newborn baby brothers.

Jace blinked once, but caught up deftly. “We couldn’t ask munda—Light Worlder movers to bring our things from the Institute, could we?”

“There are werewolf movers?” Actually, that made a lot of sense; werewolves were much stronger than Light Worlder humans, so they’d be great at lugging heavy furniture around. “Wait, does that mean there really _are_ vampire decorators? Did they paint all the rooms upstairs?”

“Just the bedrooms,” Jace said, his lips quirking at Simon’s delight. “It’s all the same company, I think.” He looked down at the piano, and his smile faded. “They brought us our instruments.”

“I remember.” Simon looked around, searching for the strange instruments he’d seen the movers—werewolf movers!—carrying in earlier. They weren’t hard to find, both of them set carefully down on the thick carpet; with Jace’s piano, the three formed the points of a triangle. “I’ve never seen anything like them. What are they?”

Jace nodded at the closer instrument, the double-necked lute-thing. “That’s Alec’s dital harp. The other is Isabelle’s harp guitar.”

“I’ve never even heard of those.” Simon got up from the stool to have a better look, all the important things they had to talk about forgotten in the wake of his curiosity. The dital harp —he could see it now; the strange curves of the second neck made sense once you knew it was meant to be part-harp—was beautiful, something that belonged in a prince’s court. The body of the instrument was engraved with gold, an incredibly detailed pattern of four-winged angels, music notes, flowers and birds running around the rim bright as flames, extending up onto the harp-neck. All of it shone with polish, and knowing Alec, Simon had no doubt that every string was in perfect tune.

Jace shrugged as Simon turned his attention to the harp guitar. “They’re popular among the Nephilim. I couldn’t say what Light Worlders prefer to play.”

“Don’t sneer, it’s unbecoming,” Simon said mildly. The harp guitar was a lot more familiar, given that it looked like an acoustic guitar with an extra neck and more strings. Like the dital harp, it was exquisitely decorated, but with its own design of running horses and what looked like ocean waves. “These are lovely.”

“Every Shadowhunter has to learn an instrument,” Jace said. “It teaches us patience, and precision. Playing well honours your family, as does the beauty of the instruments.” He stroked a flash of song over the keys of the piano. “If we’d been raised in Idris, we’d each play two or three, but it’s hard to find good tutors so far from home.”

“So between my guitar and my voice, I bring more glory to our House than you do? Sweet.”

Jace laughed, and it was a flare cast into a dark sky, a sudden burst of light. But like a flare, it faded all too quickly, and he stared down at the instrument under his hands. “Alec and Izzy’s instruments were made for them,” he said. “But this probably belonged to the Waylands.” His eyes had that mirrored sheen again, giving nothing away. “Somehow I never thought of that before.”

Simon didn’t know what to say.

Jace closed his eyes. When they opened again, the moment was gone, the dark thoughts clearly filed away. “They know about your powers now,” he said. “Alec and Izzy.”

Simon nodded slowly. There were no other seats in the music room but the piano stool, but the carpet looked soft and he sat down on it, cross-legged. They would probably have to take the carpet out, he thought randomly. It would mess with the acoustics. “What do they think?”

“They were upset I hadn’t told them earlier. But they won’t tell the Clave.” Jace turned around on the stool to face him, and paused, frowning. “What are you doing on the floor?”

“It’s perfectly comfortable,” Simon informed him archly.

Jace rolled his eyes and continued without more protest; he was getting used to Simon’s antics. “They think you should try and train your powers. If you learned to use them deliberately, maybe they wouldn’t get out of control. I think it’s worth a try.” He paused. “Isabelle also thinks we should try talking to the angel.”

Simon blinked. “Is that _possible?”_ he blurted.

“Alec’s trying to find out.” Jace glanced at the window, and the darkening night outside. “It’s late to start training tonight. We can start tomorrow morning, before you leave for school.”

“I don’t get a say in this, do I?” Simon asked wryly. “I guess I’d better sleep over then. I hope you guys have a spare toothbrush for me.”

“There should be one in your room.” Jace hesitated. “Did you like it?” He didn’t sound anxious—Jace never sounded anxious—but Simon could hear how much the answer would mean, nonetheless. “It was that colour when Alec bought the apartment—you can change it if you want, decorate it. We can get some of the posters from your old room, maybe.”

Simon smiled at him. “I like it,” he assured Jace. “I’m not sure why I have my own room here, but it’s great. I like the bed.” He realised that sounded like a come-on and added quickly, “And the bookcase. Did you choose that?”

Jace nodded, and Simon’s smile grew bigger, unsurprised but touched all the same. “Well, thank you. It’s awesome.”

“I am glad you approve,” Jace said formally, the corners of his lips turned up, and Simon grinned. “You missed some things while you were sleeping,” Jace went on, “and today, while you were at school—” He paused a moment.

“Is this about…?” Simon waved his hand to take in the room, encompassing the whole apartment in his gesture. “Why you’re here and not at home?”

“No,” Jace said. “That isn’t so complicated.” The small curve of his smile was gone as if it had never been. “Robert and Maryse threw me out, and Alec and Isabelle decided to come with me. Which I don’t deserve, but which I’ll never stop thanking them for.”

“They _threw you out?”_ These were Jace’s foster-parents, weren’t they? He’d been living with them since he was ten, since Valentine faked his death; how could you be so cold to the child you’d raised for eight years? _“Why?_ What the hell were they thinking?”

Jace looked at him, and Simon thought he looked a little confused. “You’re not going to ask what I did?”

“Nothing you could have done would justify getting kicked out of your home,” Simon snapped, and it physically hurt to see the flash of surprise in Jace’s eyes. None of these Shadowhunters had any belief in their own worth, it seemed.

“They seem to think I’m in league with Valentine,” Jace said lightly, but that statement could never be careless or trite, Simon could barely imagine how much it must hurt. “But that’s not important. Magnus came by just after you left this morning…”

*

“It has to be Valentine,” Simon said promptly when Jace had finished explaining. “Who else would want to start a war between Shadowhunters and Downworlders?”

Jace dipped his head, acknowledging the point. “It could be, although I don’t know if anyone could have predicted the Spiral Court’s ultimatum. Then again, I didn’t know the Court existed until today; maybe someone with a better grounding in Downworlder politics would have seen it coming.”

“How could you not know about the Court?” Simon asked. “Isn’t that stuff your job, more or less?”

Jace spread his hands. “I don’t know. Alec knew, but I would swear on the Angel that Hodge never mentioned it in class. Maybe he didn’t think it was important.”

“It’s the governing body for one of the peoples Shadowhunters are supposed to police. It’s important.” But Simon wasn’t as surprised as he wanted to be. This was far from the first time the Nephilim had made their lack of regard for Downworlders obvious. “Poor Magnus,” he murmured, sick sympathy pooling in his stomach. Losing a son—had that been the pain he’d felt, had he dreamed Magnus’ grief somehow? But no, Magnus hadn’t watched Elias die… “What was the other thing, the stuff I missed being unconscious?”

“That.” Jace smiled like striking a match, a quick snap of light and warmth. “Isabelle wants to be our _parabatai.”_

It took Simon a beat to realise Jace meant himself and Alec, not himself and Simon. “That’s—awesome?” He thought it was awesome. The Codex went on and on and _on_ about how important _parabatai_ bonds were—remembering bits and pieces of those passages, it suddenly clicked. “You’re going to be an _agela!”_

“Yes.” Jace was grinning outright now. “The first in our generation.”

For a moment Simon was taken aback. _They’re that rare?_ But it jived with what the Codex had said about them. _Agelae_ were a big deal, a huge deal. It was one thing to form that deep a connection with one person—then you had a _parabatai_ or _parastathentes_ bond, and those were rare enough. But to make an _agela_ , you had to have that deep an accord with multiple people, and everyone already bonded had to agree to the new addition or additions. “Congratulations. Seriously, that’s so great! Have you guys picked a name yet?”

“Alec and Isabelle are discussing possibilities as we speak.”

 _Shouldn’t you be a part of that conversation?_ But Simon didn’t say it. Jace had plenty of reasons to have wanted a little alone time with his piano—not least among them worry for and about Simon. It killed him a little, that he was always adding to Jace’s problems. All he wanted to do was take them all away, leave Jace nothing to be sad or worried or angry about.

_I just want him to be happy._

But he couldn’t put off saying this, no matter how much he’d rather hide his problems from Jace and give the blond less to worry about. “I attacked Clary today,” he blurted.

He should have known better than to expect Jace to react badly; his _aikane_ didn’t move, and if the happiness retreated from his face, it left only a smooth calm behind it, not horror. “Tell me what happened.”

Simon did, staring at his hands in his lap as he spoke. He left nothing out, describing both the incident at school and the one in the sitting room—which Jace had been present for, but he couldn’t read minds and couldn’t know what had been going through Simon’s head in that moment.

“I could have killed her,” Simon said when he was done, his gut twisting with self-loathing, with horror at how close he’d come to doing something irrevocable. “Either time. I _would_ have, if—” _If something hadn’t woken me up both times._

But that was just luck, purest luck. What if the next time they weren’t lucky?

Jace didn’t say anything for a minute; when Simon glanced up at his face, he saw the thoughtful expression on the blond’s face.

“The second time, you thought I was in a kind of danger,” he said finally. “But I don’t think you would have hurt Clary. If you’d been right on the edge, I doubt you would have snapped out of it when she hit you—you would have seen that as an attack, and responded accordingly. Some part of you must have realised she was playing, and that everything was safe.”

Simon looked back down at his hands, saying nothing.

“And the first time…” Jace frowned. “Hodge told us about something like this. It happens to mundane soldiers sometimes, and Ascended Shadowhunters, Shadowhunters who weren’t trained properly when they were children. Their instincts to respond to danger become overly sensitive. But it’s usually manageable—we just avoid the things that make you feel you’re in danger. You said you didn’t hear her coming, and it scared you—so now we know to always let you know when we’re approaching you.” He smiled, gently. “And if other triggers come up, we’ll learn them and avoid them too.”

“What if we don’t learn them in time, and I hurt someone?” Simon’s throat was tight. How many triggers could there be? And what if some of them weren’t as easy to avoid as being snuck up on?

“You won’t,” Jace said calmly. “You realised what was happening when Clary said your name, didn’t you? You woke up. As long as everyone knows to call your name if you get scared like that, we’ll be fine.”

Simon lifted his head, stared at him. “You couldn’t wake me up,” he whispered. At the base of the stairs, with blood in his mouth and alien worlds behind his eyes. “You called my name, but I couldn’t hear you.”

Jace stilled. “That was different,” he said firmly. “That was—something to do with your angel. And _that_ will settle down once we start training your powers.”

 _There are so many things wrong with me._ Simon didn’t say it. Jace didn’t need to hear that, to be reminded of that, to have Simon’s misery rubbed in his face.

 _“Aikane,”_ Jace said softly, and Simon came back to him, dragged himself away from wallowing in his fears and melancholies. “It’s going to be all right.”

“I hope you’re right,” Simon whispered.

_I really, really do._

*

Alec and Isabelle had four books spread out between them on the glass table when Jace and Simon found them in the dining room. There was a wooden crate of books at the end of the sofa, but these were evidently not needed at the moment.

“You guys brought the library with you too?” Simon asked, nodding at the box as he nabbed a cushion from the sofa. He dropped it on the floor and sat down there, next to the low table, where he could watch the going’s on without being in the way.

Alec shook his head without looking up. “No, those are mine. I _wish_ we had a proper library here, but it will take years to build a good one of our own.” There was a notebook and pen beside his hand, and peering at a page in one of the books he scribbled something down.

“Have you found us a name yet?” Jace asked.

Izzy pointed at the notebook. “We’re down to five,” she said. “Remiel, Abadiel, Zachariel, Sariel, and Iophiel.”

When she said _Sariel_ , the world stopped, turned white and gold. The sound of it thrummed through Simon, something in him vibrating like a struck bell, ringing and ringing.

“How do you choose?” he asked to cover the moment, thrusting the weirdness away, not wanting to think about it, examine it. “I know _agelae_ are named for angels, it’s in the Codex, but how do you pick which one to name yourself after?”

“You go by the angel’s associations, mostly,” Alec said. He didn’t meet Simon’s eyes, but otherwise he didn’t seem to be unnerved now that he knew Simon could freeze him in place with a thought. But maybe he was just pretending at indifference he didn’t feel. How could you tell? “Different angels mean different things, because of what they’ve done or what their tasks are.”

“Their tasks?”

It was Isabelle who answered. “There are thousands of angels recorded, but we don’t really know much about them. Ancient texts—religious books, old grimoires, that kind of thing—say that some angels have particular purposes. This one looks after children; that one governs storms. That kind of thing. So we think some of them have set tasks, set jobs to do.”

“Who sets the tasks?” Simon asked. “God?”

“We don’t know any more about God than Light Worlders do,” Jace said. “We don’t know if there _is_ a God.”

“There are Nephilim who don’t even believe in angels,” Isabelle added, with a pointed look at Jace.

“I have been convinced otherwise,” Jace said dryly. Even here in the privacy of his very own home, Alec was still wearing his fingerless gloves.

“Well,” Simon said, _“my_ angel thinks you should go with Sariel.”

The Shadowhunters all whipped their heads to stare at him, each face its own study in shock.

“Did it speak to you?” Isabelle asked softly.

Simon shook his head. “Not in words,” he clarified, awkward under the scrutiny. It was too easy to forget, sometimes, that this was their religion; that he was, in some sense, the avatar for a force the Nephilim honoured like a god. He could see some of that in their eyes as they watched him. “I think it just approves of the name choice.”

The Lightwood siblings exchanged a three-way glance, and Simon was still not sure how the hell they managed that. “Could Sariel be its own name?” Alec asked, low.

This time, the name drew no reaction from whatever lived in the shadows behind Simon’s heart; he shrugged helplessly, unable to answer.

“Which one is Sariel?” Jace asked.

Alec looked at his notes. “One of the archangels listed in the War Scroll. He fought for good in the War of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, and the human soldiers fighting under him had his name on their shields.”

“Then maybe mine just thinks it’s an appropriate choice,” Simon said, when there was still no response to the name, or the bio. “What’s the War Scroll?”

“One of the Qumran texts,” Alec said absently.

“The Dead Sea Scrolls,” Izzy explained.

Simon raised his eyebrows. “Weren’t they only discovered a few years ago?”

Alec frowned at him. “Decades ago,” he corrected.

Decades didn’t seem very long for the information in them to have become part of the Nephilim canon, Simon thought, glancing at the books on the table. But then, it was no surprise that the Nephilim took their angelic lore seriously.

“I think we should follow the suggestion,” Izzy said. “An angel’s advice isn’t something to ignore.”

Jace leaned back into the sofa. “Seconded.”

Alec flipped his pen between his fingers. “It’s a good name,” he said quietly. “All right. Sariel it is.”

As the Shadowhunters began discussing arrangements for the ceremony that would make them an _agela_ , Simon turned his attention inward, searching for the evanescent sense of the Other inside him. _Are you Sariel?_

But there was no answer.

*

“Of course I’ll witness for you,” Simon said when they asked him. “You want to do it—now?”

“Not just yet.” Jace and Izzy both looked at Alec, clearly surprised, maybe wondering if he wanted to call it off. But Alec shook his head at them both. “I’m not delaying. There’s other Marks I need first.”

Understanding washed across his siblings’ faces, but Simon was still confused. “What Marks?”

“Mourning,” Isabelle said softly.

Alec didn’t correct her. “Will you help me?” he asked Jace.

“You don’t need to ask.”

Simon assumed that the two boys would leave the room, but instead Alec stood up and started pulling off his shirt, right then and there. Simon scooted up and dropped into one of the armchairs, out of the way, trying not to stare. Isabelle went to dim the lights, but not before Simon caught a better look than he’d wanted of the ragged scars slashed across Alec’s chest from shoulder to opposite hip, souvenirs of the battle with Abaddon. They bisected four runes, which had faded to ghostly white under the onslaught and been redrawn elsewhere; _mnemosyne, dexterias, suplete, indarra_.

Without a flicker of self-consciousness, Alec moved past the table and knelt on the carpet, liquid and graceful, head bowed and arms outstretched. In the shadowy light, it had the air of ritual, something ceremonial and sacred, dissolving Simon’s awkwardness before it had a chance to form.

Jace drew his stele. Simon and Isabelle watched in matching silences as he bent to Mark his _parabatai_.

But Simon had to swallow a gasp of surprise, because the lines that unfolded from the stele were not the familiar black: they were _red_ , as red as roses or blood, and wisps of thin smoke rose from Alec’s skin at the drawing of them. All runes hurt, but Simon had never seen them burn like that—and he’d never heard anyone cry out at the pain as Alec did now, unabashed by his audience or pride; low, hoarse cries that came from deep in his chest. It felt intensely, awfully private, more than holy, and Simon knew he was being unaccountably privileged to be allowed to see this moment, to bear witness to it.

He refused to close his eyes or turn away from the tableau.

Jace drew one Mark on the back of Alec’s neck—a whorling v embraced by a horizontal crescent; in Simon’s head he heard a desolate wail, a wordless lament echoing through cold, indifferent stones. Sorrowful violins joined it, as more runes graced the base of Alec’s spine and the back of his chest, right over the back of his heart; and the soft, hesitant sadness of a piano rippling through the not-song. Then one each on the inside of his elbows, the faint smell of charred flesh underscoring the terrible sense of loss beating an awful sympathy in Simon’s chest.

It was done. Jace put the stele away and helped Alec to his feet; after all that, Simon was unsurprised to see tears like gemstones in Alec’s cheek, catching the faint light.

Jace kissed Alec’s cheek, and Simon held himself still, understanding that this was part of the ritual. Isabelle copied Jace, crossing the room to touch her lips to Alec’s other cheek. Simon didn’t get up: he’d been allowed to watch, but he had no part of Alec’s grief, didn’t have the right to give him this small closure, if closure it was.

No one asked him to. No one turned the lights back up again, either, and as Alec bent down to the floor with his own stele Simon realised that they were going to do the _agela_ ceremony right now, right here. Jace and Isabelle began stripping off their shirts as Alec traced a circle on the carpet; fire followed his stele, flames that crackled and spat but burned nothing and stayed on the line Alec drew for them. Shirtless now, Izzy and Jace drew circles of their own, arranging them like the points of a triangle with Alec’s, and where Alec’s burned blue Jace’s was gold, and Isabelle’s cast a light the same colour as the ruby hanging from her throat. But Isabelle drew a second, larger circle at the centre of the triangle, between the other three, and this one burned white, like milk and salt and snow.

Simon wanted to ask what the colours meant, if they meant anything at all, but the silence draped the room like an altar cloth and held him back.

Without a word spoken or exchanged, the Shadowhunters holstered their steles and stepped into the outer circles; Alec into the blue, Jace the gold, Isabelle the red. The flames cast eldritch shadows over the scene, and unlike the ceremony of the mourning runes here the empty space felt wrong, the privacy not just unnecessary but unwanted. There should have been more witnesses here, family and friends; silk banners on the walls and representatives from the Silent Brothers and the Clave. There should have been music as the Lightwoods clasped hands through their circles, forging an unbroken chain.

Instead, there was only Isabelle’s voice, her words smooth and confident as she held her brothers’ hands;

 

_“Entreat me not to leave ye,_

_Or return from following after ye—_

_For whither ye goest, I will go,_

_And where ye lodgest, I will lodge._

_Your people shall be my people, and your God my God._

_Where ye diest, will I die, and there will I be buried._

_The Angel do so to me, and more also,_

_If aught but death part ye and me!”_

With every word the flames burned brighter, leapt higher, but though they licked at the Shadowhunters’ wrists there was no smell of burning, and none of them flinched.

“Entreat us not to leave thee,” Jace and Alec said in unison,

 

_“Or return from following after thee—_

_For whither thou goest, we will go,_

_And where thou lodgest, we will lodge._

_Thy people shall be our people, and your God our God._

_Where thou diest, will we die, and there will we be buried._

_The Angel do so to us, and more also,_

_If aught but death part thee and we!”_

 

Ruby and sapphire and gold danced across the walls, the ceiling, the carpet, and the flames were roaring by the time Alec and Jace finished speaking, almost loud enough to drown out the end of the oath. But not quite, not quite that loud, and the light on their skin was stained glass and jewels as all three of them walked through the fire and into the central circle, into that blaze of whiteness as pure and bright as seraphfire.

It washed them into something more than human.

Now all three of them drew their steles once more; Izzy’s plain wand of crystal, Alec’s engraved with tribal-esque swirls and dots, and Jace’s new one, given to him the day of his Dedication, decorated with abstract lightning bolts and fire. Simon didn’t know if they had pre-arranged the order they would go in, but Jace reached out first, touching the tip of his stele to Isabelle’s heart. The black strokes swept over her collarbone and the upper curve of her breast, unbroken and perfect, shining ebony beside the caged fire of her ruby pendant. Then Jace gave way for Alec, and Isabelle held out her left arm for him, stood straight and tall and proud as the seal took shape on her upper arm, a flawless brand on the taut skin.

Simon found himself holding his breath as the Marks took shape, the beginnings of an irrevocable bond. The tension in the room grew thicker and thicker, heavier and heavier; the arms on his hairs were standing straight up, and as Isabelle brought her stele to Jace’s arm her hair, too, began to lift, the strands not caught in her braid waving as if she were underwater. Static electricity caught on Simon’s fingers; sparks of light, blue-gold-red-white, wove around the Shadowhunters in the circle like tiny serpents, winding about legs and wrists like unearthly jewellery. Isabelle’s stele caught the light of the white fire as she scribed the rune on Jace’s bicep; by the time she turned to Alec it was glowing like a star in her hand.

She traced the _parabatai_ Mark over Alec’s heart—

And vanished. All three of them disappeared from view as the white flames leapt up to the ceiling with a thundering roar, and the light of them was so bright Simon flung up an arm to cover his face and protect his eyes.

***

The world disappeared, and the universe opened up. Isabelle’s skin turned to glass and then to water, and for a fraction of a heart-beat she saw Alec and Jace transmuted the same way, saw them and saw _into_ them, thoughts and wishes and memories and dreams and hopes and fears—

And then like three rivers falling from the same cliff, they plunged together and became one.

It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt and it didn’t feel like drowning; it was ecstasy, her body dissolving into purest bliss, into light, her skin opening up and out like a blossoming passion flower, letting her out, setting her free, and oh, this was why they named _agelae_ for angels, because this must be what it felt like to be one of the celestials, to feel your heart and mind and soul unfolding outwards to encompass galaxies, stretching limitless wings to the edges of creation––

But she was not alone there; melting into her like fire meeting fire were two other souls and she welcomed them in, felt them join with her and become her and they were so beautiful, so perfectly imperfect, miracles of life and chance that shone like diamonds to her new senses, these senses that had no flesh to bind them––they were brilliant things, so incredible she would have cried if she’d still had a body, and they were her, part of her as she was part of them, three rivers become one endless ocean of ever-shifting light and then there was no Isabelle at all, only _we-I-us_ , a triple-faceted star blazing brighter than bright could be—

_*joy awe amazement exhilarated-YES welcoming open-armed-gladness, delight celebration laughter, the wait was too long, finally-complete, blood singing with elation exult exult exult in being alive-whole-here-one-one-one oh-the-bliss oh-the-love we are I, we are us, WE ARE SARIEL!*_

For aeons _we-I-us_ danced between bodies, flowing from one to the other like water spilling into new vessels, delighting in the play of memories and the exchange of sensations—a falcon on Jace’s wrist/Izzy’s first glimpse of a newborn Max/feel of an arrow flying from Alec’s fingers. They saw-felt sex from different perspectives and the differences were only more joys, more amusements, no more important or strange than the weight of longer hair or the feel of paper beneath callused fingertips; they explored the differences in their bodies, the differing shapes and strengths and centres of gravity, marvelling in them, delighted with them. Experiences flashed by like a kaleidoscope’s many colours, shifting from one to another without pause or prediction; riding bareback on the plains outside Alicante, the hot splash of ichor on a cheek, the burn in the calves as one ran across a rooftop. Joys fell like raindrops in a storm, first kisses and favourite books and the thrill of accomplishing a difficult martial move or mastering a new weapon, and _we-I-us_ celebrated each one as if the taste of hot chocolate or the sight of the sunset over the bay were masterpieces to rival the Wonders of the World. There were pains and sorrows, too, heart-hurts and soul-scars, and these were touched and soothed, salved with bone-deep understanding and a wordless, boundless love, because how could they _not_ be, there were no scars too ugly for their bond, no secrets too terrible, nothing that could not be accepted and cherished and lit with their light…

Gradually, as slowly as the movements of glaciers, the _we-I-us_ that called itself Sariel began to separate into _I, and I, and I_ , a single river dividing into three tributaries. Isabelle’s skin re-formed, closing around her like a familiar shell; the water of her crystallised, became diamond that spun itself into flesh, into blood and bone and breath. But her shell was gauze, translucent and permeable, only pretending to keep her separate. She could feel Alec and Jace on the other side of it, and _inside_ it, inside her skin with her, just as parts of her were in theirs.

No, that was simplifying it. There was no _her_ and _them_. What she felt were the parts of _we-I-us_ that called itself Jace and Alec, and the awareness that the mind that called itself Isabelle was just another part of that greater One.

Fear reached up to engulf her, a petty, too-late panic that she didn’t exist anymore, that she wasn’t real, only a figment of her own imagination—

And instantly they were there, both of them, reassurance wrapping around her like an angel’s wings as they showed her where the lines were, tracing them like gold around the edges of her self—they’d had years to learn this, years to get used to this incredible but terrifying blending. In an instant the knowledge of how to draw a veil over thoughts and memories passed from their minds to hers, as if she’d always known it, and the relief spilled over from her to them and back again; so there was to be some privacy after all, some space to be just herself.

Abruptly she realised her eyes were closed, and opened them.

At some point the three of them had clasped hands again. She didn’t remember that, but she could see and feel it. The fires had gone out, and for an instant she saw out of Jace’s eyes, breathed air through Alec’s lungs.

_*We are Sariel!*_

It would take them a little while to be solidly themselves again.

“Now that that’s over,” Simon said brightly, and she blinked, having almost forgotten he was there, “who wants take-out?”

***

Jace picked at the chicken tikka masala, half-listening to Simon on the phone with Clary. He was telling her he would be staying the night, but Jace was too distracted to be excited by what that meant; he could feel Isabelle’s fork between her fingers, taste the cardamom on Alec’s tongue. The bond was new and loud, and even with Jace and Alec helping to hold the boundaries, the walls were permeable as netting. Almost every time he blinked he found himself glimpsing the word through another pair of eyes for a second, steel-grey or ocean-blue.

He felt so guilty it was making him sick, and there was no hiding it from his _agelai_. None of them spoke aloud—they didn’t want to alert Simon to their private not-conversation—but Alec and Izzy were fierce in their wordless denials, refusing to let him blame himself for the turn of events.

On the one hand, he was so incredibly happy; the sense of _completion_ was unreal, the primal joy of being three-in-one instead of two- almost overwhelming, every pleasure he remembered from becoming Alec’s _parabatai_ multiplied threefold. It was not that, as _parabatai_ , he and Alec had been missing anything—never that; they’d been whole and perfect, flawless. But now… Now it felt _better_ than perfect, _more_ than whole. It was supernaturally, divinely good, and even the overwhelming intensity of it—which would fade with the days—couldn’t make him regret it for an instant.

But on the other… Izzy and Alec deserved so much better than Indian take-away in a dark, empty apartment. For the first _agela_ in a generation the Clave would have swept them to Alicante, would have hung the banners of their Houses from the walls of the Gard. The Angel’s city would have come alight to celebrate their bonding; there would have been dancing in the streets, public feasts, an almost religious holiday. The leaders of every caste would have been there to hear them step from the circle and announce their new name: _Sariel._ But because of Jace, they had none of that.

 _*But this is what we wanted,*_ Isabelle told him firmly, and the bond meant he couldn’t doubt her for an instant; he could feel the truth in the thought. _*We didn’t WANT a party.*_

Alec’s agreement came through loud and clear; he, in fact, was relieved to escape the bedlam of an official celebration. _*All those people watching us, scrutinising us…*_ His distaste needed no words.

There was no regret in his _agelai_ , no mourning for the lost acclaim. It would come anyway; the Nephilim would discover their newest _agela_ soon enough, and they would be famous, whether they willed it or no.

 _*All we dodged was having to forge the bond in public,*_ Alec thought. _*They’ll still throw a festival when they find out, if we’re not careful.*_

Jace loved them both so much it hurt.

“If you guys don’t mind,” Simon said, “I have an early start tomorrow.” He tipped his head wryly at Jace. How long had it been since he’d been talking to Clary? Jace kept losing minutes of time, distracted by the sensation of Izzy’s hair against the back of her neck, the paper plate in Alec’s hand pressing into the base of his thumb as he held it…

And he’d done it again. Simon was standing, smiling, and Jace hadn’t even registered him getting to his feet. “Congratulations again,” Simon said warmly. “I’ll see you guys in the morning. ’night.”

He left, taking the empty take-out container with him. Jace wondered what he meant to do with it; were there trash bags in the kitchen yet? None of them had thought to buy anything so…mundane, while they were shopping today. They’d picked out furniture, and later Clary had urged junk food on them, insisting a new house deserved a party. But trash bags? Milk, bread, toothpaste? Had anyone thought to buy things like that?

He wondered if they’d have time to go grocery shopping tomorrow. And if Simon or Clary would be able to go with them, because buying the candy today had been the Shadowhunters’ first time in a mundane store.

With Simon gone up to bed, the _agelai_ sat in companionable silence while they ate. There was no need for words, no need to talk when every thought that crossed one mind flashed across the others’ like the tail of a comet. Physical sensations were the loudest part of it, strange but absorbing; the sated fullness of Alec’s stomach as he cleared his place, Izzy’s bolt of pain when she accidentally bit her cheek. It was so easy to get lost in them, so easy to forget whose body was whose. Skin felt more like a guideline than a law; it didn’t, _couldn’t_ keep them out, keep them apart. They sieved from one to the other and back again, fascinated by their differences, their similarities, anchoring within their own bodies only with effort.

When Jace returned to his body after mesmerisededly exploring the passing of air in and out of Isabelle’s lungs for an endless stretch of time, the food had grown cold, and the night outside was black as pitch. It struck him with a pang, briefly; they should have been out on patrol by now, on a normal night. The guilt echoed in Alec and Izzy, none of them proud to have, however temporarily, set aside the search for Elias and Xia’s murderer.

But tonight was not a normal night, and although they ought to be more settled in the bond by tomorrow, right now trying to fight demons would only result in disaster. Knowing _when_ to fight was just as important as knowing _how_ to; Hodge had been very clear on that, for as long as Jace had known him.

By silent, wordless accord, the three _agelai_ agreed: it was time to go to their new beds. Tomorrow would be soon enough to test—and reveal, to themselves and the world—the extent of their new powers.

***

Simon woke to the door opening, sleepily blinking away hazy impressions of draconic wings wrapped around him, silver hair falling like a curtain around his face. He knew who was there before he looked, something in him recognising Jace’s presence even in his sleep, knowing him by his breathing and scent and stance…

“Simon?” Jace called softly. He had not moved from the doorway, and Simon remembered that everyone was supposed to let him know if they were going to approach him. “Are you awake? Can I come in?”

“’Course.” Simon rolled over in the bed so he was facing the door. Jace was a blurred figure backlit by a smear of light from the corridor. “’M naked though.” He would have to borrow underwear in the morning; all he had with him was his school uniform.

“That’s really not a problem,” Jace said wryly, and Simon snorted, trying not to laugh. Were the others asleep? He didn’t want to wake them if they were…

Jace came in, closing the door behind him. He didn’t turn on the lights, but Simon could just pick him out of the darkness; the wall-length window opposite burnished him with the nocturnal lights of the city. Simon would have to find curtains from somewhere, eventually...

He closed his eyes, half-listening to Jace’s footsteps pad softly across the floor. Then the mattress was giving under his weight, the sheets rustling as he slipped beneath them, and his arm slid around Simon’s waist, drawing him closer, pulling him against Jace’s steady, familiar warmth. He was wearing boxers but nothing else, and Simon sighed with heavy, languid pleasure to have all that best-loved skin pressed against his.

He felt Jace’s smile when he kissed Simon’s hair. “Go back to sleep,” he murmured. “I’m right here.”

_‘You’re okay. You’re okay, I’m right here. Ssh, don’t cry, God.’_

Abruptly Simon was wide-awake and frozen sick.

“Simon?” No matter how tired he was, Jace could never miss Simon’s sudden tension. He was a Shadowhunter; probably he couldn’t ignore that kind of thing even if he’d wanted to. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Simon whispered. He didn’t want to remember now, here in bed with Jace, in Jace’s arms. He’d managed not to think of it for weeks, and now was not the time to confess to his _aikane_ —it was late, they had an early morning waiting for them tomorrow, and Jace had already had enough to deal with today. Forget everything else, he’d been kicked out of his _home_ —

 _It can wait_ , he told himself guiltily, trying to bury the memory again, forcing his body to relax so Jace wouldn’t worry _. It will wait_.

 “Then by the Angel, can we sleep now?” Jace asked, amusement threaded through his voice. “Are we done?”

“I think so,” Simon said gravely. His heart was pounding, and he wondered if Jace could hear it. “Wait, no, one more thing.”

“Simon, it is time to _sleep_ —” Jace began, but whatever he’d been going to say next went unspoken as Simon bridged the distance between them and kissed him, threading his fingers in Jace’s silky hair.

“I love you,” Simon breathed. Guilt pooled in his stomach like mercury, but the very air in his lungs sparkled like champagne and diamond-dust because he _meant it_ , by all the gods real and imagined he meant it. “I love you so much, Jace Lightwood.”

 _“Ol boaluahe gi,”_ Jace murmured, brushing the words over Simon’s lips as the kiss ended.

Simon laughed. “Your pronunciation’s getting much better,” he teased.

Rolling his eyes—Simon couldn’t see it in the dark, but he _knew_ —Jace swatted his ass through the blanket, smirking and nipping Simon’s jaw as he yelped. “Go to _sleep,”_ Jace ordered, his voice indulgent.

“I’m going, I’m going.” Simon squirmed down into the blankets, smiling so hard it hurt. When Jace settled again, once more looping his arm around Simon’s waist and tugging him closer possessively, Simon tucked his head under Jace’s chin, his lips against Jace’s throat.

The steady beat of his pulse was all the lullaby Simon needed.

 

* * *

 

  


NOTES

 

 _Agelae_ is the plural of _agela_.

‘Nerf herder’ is an insult used by Princess Leia in _Empire Strikes Back._ I freely admit I have no idea what a nerf is.

Did you catch the Princess Bride reference?

For those who’ve forgotten, _medianox_ is the midnight flower Jace shows Clary in the greenhouse scene of _City of Bones_.

The ‘that’ll do, pig, that’ll do’ line is from _The Sheep Pig_ , by Dick King-Smith. It was made into a lovely movie called _Babe_ in 1995.

Clary’s middle name, ‘Esther’, means ‘hidden’ in Hebrew and ‘star’ in Persian. Queen Esther saved the Jews from Haman, and has her own book in the Tanakh.

 _Toltorg_ means ‘of the earth’ in Enochian.

Xe, ae and ve/vir are all separate pronouns and refer to different individuals in Simon’s visions/dreams.

 _Erastes_ , as you might remember from CoS, means ‘lover in ancient Greek, and was/is used to refer to the dominant partner in a male homosexual relationship.

A banshee is a Scottish spirit that takes the form of a ghostly woman. The myths differ; either their wails cause the death of those who hear them, or their wails simply herald or mark the death.

The colours song is, of course, by Cassandra Clare and appears in _City of Heavenly Fire_.

Abadiel is one of the Seraphim, who defeated Ariel, Arioc, Ramiel and even Satan in the war against Lucifer.

Iophiel is one of Metatron’s companions, prince of the Divine Presence and the Divine Law. In some traditions he is one of the seven archangels.

Remiel is another angel sometimes counted as an archangel, responsible for destroying the armies of Sennacherib. He is the angel of hope.

Zachariel is another archangel! Supposedly the youngest archangel. His name means ‘God’s command’.

On the _parabatai/agela_ ritual: _ye_ is the archaic plural for ‘you’, which is why I’ve replaced ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ from the _parabatai_ oath (meant to address one person) with ye, since Isabelle is being bound to multiple people here. (Technically _thou_ should be replaced with _ye_ and _thee_ with _you_ , but I messed with the grammar because ‘you’ sounded too modern. Whatcha gonna do?) As for the flame colours; the colour is individual to the Shadowhunter who draws it, and not representational.

 _Ol boaluahe gi_ —I love you (Enochian).


	5. Interlude: Starfire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should really have made you guys wait a little longer for this, but screw it: I had so much fun with it that I really wanted to share it! 
> 
> In other news: _City of Shadows_ is a finalist for the **All Time Favorite Mortal Instruments Fanfic** over on Fanatic Fanfics!!! How ridiculously awesome is that? I didn't even know CoS had been nominated; I actually started crying when I found out. YOU GUYS. I DON'T EVEN KNOW. It's been a few days since I found out and I'm still freaking speechless about the whole thing.
> 
> If you want to vote, head over [here](http://fanaticfanficsawards.blogspot.fi/p/voting_30.html) to the Fantic Fanfics page. Voting closes on June 22nd, so hurry!
> 
> And a huge, enormous thank you to everyone who's ever enjoyed this series. I just don't have the words. <3

Nandira’s hooves were loud as thunder as she and her rider cantered alongside the pre-dawn traffic, but the mortals in their tin cans were deaf and blind to the unicorn’s passing, even as her moon-milk tail streamed behind her like that of a shooting star. Occasionally it brushed like silk against the face of a pedestrian, and then for a fraction of an instant there might be a glimpse of awareness in the mortal’s face.

But it was gone as swiftly as was the unicorn.

On Nandira’s back, Olianthe bore her favourite spear, long and pale as a moonbeam and sharp as sunlight. The humans’ street lamps set rainbow fire to her armour as she passed beneath them, amber and blunt white light trailing desperate kisses over the intricately hinged diamond bodysuit that covered her from throat to fingertips to the soles of her feet. Its lining of four-leaf clovers protected her from the poison of the city’s iron, but nothing could hide the stench of steel and tar and entropy.

Through the slit of her helm, Olianthe caught glimpses of the rest of the _ryhmä_ to either side; the squad on the roster for patrol duty this night, four _tähtisuar_ and their knights, who with Olianthe brought the number of patrollers to the sacred number five, one for each pillar of the world. Like her, they were armoured in diamond and armed with obsidian-headed spears, ready to send their Dark Cousins back to Hell should it prove needful.

And Olianthe could sense them, the Cousins; gathered in the shadows, pressed tight together in the unclaimed spaces. They had flooded into the city over the previous weeks, so that every dawn the night’s _ugala_ reported greater numbers of them than the dawn before. Olianthe had seen demons before, she had _warred_ demons before, but never in her long life had she known them to gather in such numbers. Not since the time of the Queen’s dam had such a gathering been seen—and that had been the invasion of this world.

This was not _quite_ so large as that—surely, if it had been, even the _serkut äpärä_ , the Bastard Cousins who called themselves the Nephilim without understanding what that word meant, would have noticed—but neither was this gathering…violent. Olianthe felt them watching, but they _only_ watched: her knights had not found or heard of a single attack by the Cousins in a fortnight. It was unheard of. She had thought that the knights must be missing something, but Magnus- _ashipu-rei_ had said that no, the _serkut äpärä_ had found no demonic activity either, and if an _ashipu-rei_ told you that the Cousins had done no harm in his territory, then the Cousins had done no harm in his territory.

No doubt the _serkut äpärä_ would have slain the demons Olianthe and the _ryhmä_ sensed, if they could, but the People had their own ways of dealing with the infernal. The Cousins were kin, after all, and closer kin at that than the Bastards. If they did no harm, then the People would not harm them either.

It was not to hunt demons that the patrol went now.

Without needing the slightest direction from her knight, Nandira turned neatly on mother-of-pearl heels, bunched powerful muscles, and leapt, clearing four lanes of traffic as lightly as hopping over a puddle. Olianthe was ready for it, having long ago learnt Nandira’s language; her jewelled fingers were tangled in the _tähtisua_ ’s short mane as Nandira went aloft, balancing her weight and that of the spear with the ease of long practice. The unicorn landed like a snowflake and sprang forward like a hunting cat; in moments they were flying through the fifth avenue entrance to Central Park, with the other knights bare seconds behind them.

Even at this hour the Park was not deserted, but neither the unicorns nor the knights paid any attention to the mortals straggling home after a night of poor decisions or settling in for the night on the park benches. One of the latter raised a hand in salute as the _ryhmä_ tore past; perhaps drugs or alcohol had given him the Sight for a night, or perhaps a Sighted life had driven him to homelessness. It was often so among the elf-touched the People did not choose to bring home, and now that the Accords had forbidden the practice all the Sighted were left to the untender mercies of the mundane world, where they rarely flourished. If they were lucky the _cairde_ would find them, the Friends, but many were not lucky.

The _ryhmä_ carved a crescent between the obelisk and Belvedere Lake and onto what the mortals called the Great Lawn, tracing a curving path around the northern side of the lake. Here there were no humans in sight, only another member of the Queen’s Court waiting for them, distinct in the Seelie’s diamond armour.

Olianthe swung down from Nandira’s white back before the mare had stopped moving, using the butt of her spear to aid her landing. The rest of the _ryhmä_ pulled up behind her.

“This is where they came through,” Luiganaine said as Olianthe approached, and Olianthe dropped lightly to one knee at the space indicated. Her armour melted back up her hand like mercury to bare her fingers, allowing her to touch the grass with naked skin. Luiganaine had spoken in a tongue no mortal would have recognised, not even the elf-touched; few had heard it outside the knowes these past thousand years. None would overhear and understand this conversation, neither mortal nor anyone not of the Queen’s Court.

Olianthe’s eyes flicked back and forth, reading the signs; she tasted the air and thought she knew the answer even before she asked, in the same language, “How many?”

“Six, _lugal-nin,”_ Luiganaine answered. “Three females and three males.”

“All armed, I assume.”

“Most heavily, _lugal-nin.”_

Olianthe traced the outlines of a footprint with her fingertips, tasting the magic of the one who had made it. “The Queen-my-dam has had no word of their coming. Permission was not requested, nor granted.” And that worried her. She had never known the _cairde_ ’s hunters to be anything but unfailingly courteous, far more so than the Bastards. It went against thousands of years of fruitful dealings for them to enter Seelie territory without paying their respects.

“Perhaps they attempt to hunt in secret,” one of the other knights, Siroreth, suggested.

Olianthe withdrew her hand, allowing her armour to fold around her palm and fingers once more, sheathing her in crystal. “Not so. The _cairde_ may be mortal, but they are of a different kind to the _serkut äpärä_ , Siro. The Bastards might believe they could trick us, but these ones… They knew we would find signs of their passing. By rowan and oak I would swear it.”

Siroreth did not frown, but she slid into the formal pose of polite confusion, her fingers curled just so, her chin lifted to a precise angle, requesting clarification without the need for speech.

Olianthe shifted her body into the pose of instruction. “I have fought alongside the _cairde_ many times. And I tell you that they would not attempt to deceive the Queen-my-dam. For one, they know it cannot be done; for another, they have honour.”

On Siroreth’s other side, Kisavirel gestured _disbelief._ “Mortals with honour?”

“I tell you that it is so.” Olianthe pulled back her shoulders and conveyed, by the angle of her spine, that she was insulted, and more than prepared to defend herself. “Do you name me Fallen?”

The other knight held up her hands, crossing them at the wrists with the palms facing outwards. “Never, _lugal-nin!”_

“It is good for you that you do not,” Olianthe told her coldly. Turning back to Luiganaine, she said, “Destroy all traces of the _cairde_ ’s passing. None of you will speak of what was found here!” This was addressed equally to Luiganaine and to the knights who had accompanied Olianthe here, and was not so much a command as a statement. The People did not lie, and Olianthe shaped the universe to her will by her words; the gathered knights made the signs of _obedience to Truth_. “I will convey all to the Queen-my-dam, and by her word only will you speak on this matter. _Näin-ääninen, näin marthain!”_

 _“Näin-ääninen, näin marthain,”_ the knights echoed, and Nandira stamped a hoof as if placing her seal on her rider’s words.

Olianthe grabbed a fistful of the unicorn’s mane, braced her spear against the ground, and swung herself up onto Nandira’s back. “Mount quickly,” she ordered as the other knights made their way to the _tähtisuar_ who had chosen them—one the colour called _dawn over flames,_ one _sand of Avalon_ , and two of the shade known to the People as _river mist_. Only Nandira was that colour sacred to Dôn, the purest white called _starfire_. “I would have the Queen-my-dam know of this ere the dawn breaks!”

Had anyone been watching the paths of the park mere moments later, they might have seen—if they had swallowed the right poisons that night, or if the moonlight had slanted just so through the trees—the Seelie _ryhmä_ streaking past like a meteor shower, all gem-light and myth-magic, children of powers older than the world they rode through. And at their head, the Seelie Queen’s youngest daughter, a spear in her hand and her golden hair streaming like a banner behind her, her diamond helm bright as any crown.

Or they might have seen nothing at all.

* * *

 

 

NOTES

 

 _Ryhmä_ —squad.

 _Tähtisuar_ —the fey word for unicorns. The singular is _tähtisua._

 _Ugala_ —Sumerian word meaning squad leader.

Dam is an archaic word for mother. In modern parlance it’s mostly just used amongst animal breeders to refer to an animal’s mother. The male equivalent would be sire.

 _Serkut äpärä_ —‘bastard cousins’, the fey term for the Nephilim.

 _Ashipu_ is the correct title for a warlock, and comes from Sumerian again. _Rei_ means king or prince; together, _ashipu-rei_ specifies a High Warlock rather than a normal warlock.

The People is the fey’s name for themselves.

 _Cairde_ is literally ‘friends’ in Irish.

 _Lugal_ means something like General in Sumerian. _Nin_ means princess.

 _Näin-ääninen, näin marthain—_ translates as something like ‘so spoken, so it be’, or ‘so spoken, so extant’.

Dôn is the mother goddess of the Welsh pantheon, often considered to be the same figure the Irish Celtic goddess Danu, who is the mother goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The Tuatha Dé Danann, of course, are the faerie/god figures of Irish Celtic mythology.


	6. Stillborn Epiphanies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter goes out to dazedream, timorousAugur, crazywriterperson and lovelyzn on AO3, for your lovely comments and reviews. You guys played a huge part in knocking me out of my writing funk. Thank you so much <3
> 
> Thanks also to my UNBELIEVABLY INCREDIBLE beta, Starrie_Wolf. You don’t even want to know what the first draft of this chapter looked like, my dears; it was _horrendous_. Mention zem in your prayers tonight!
> 
> And now, onwards. 
> 
>  
> 
> **Trigger Warnings for dubious consent and loss of bodily autonomy in this chapter.**

_‘So you never wanted me at all, then?’_

_‘No!’ The disappointment and hurt on his face is awful, and Simon should have known this would never end well, could never end well for any of them. ‘Don’t think that. It’s—you’re everything I ever wanted.’_

_It’s just that Jace is everything he never knew to want…_

“Time to wake up, _aikane.”_

Simon woke like a plate breaking, guilt racing through his veins. When he blinked up at Jace, the fading shreds of his dream clung to his eyelashes, sticky as silt.

“’Morning,” he managed thickly. His mouth tasted awful, and Jace’s face was a blurry smear of gold. “Can’t see you.”

Jace handed him his glasses, and when Simon put them on his heart stuttered as Jace’s smile came into focus, soft and fond and so sweet it hurt.

The guilt was thick and sour in Simon’s gut.

“Good morning.” Jace kissed his cheek, politely dodging any morning breath, and was out of the bed before Simon could catch a breath. “Now come on. Get up, get dressed, get going!”

“Nmrrrgh.” Simon rolled over, pulling the blanket over his head. He’d gotten a glimpse of the watery daylight through the window and was feeling betrayed. “This is not morning. You’re a lying liar who lies.”

He heard Jace laugh, a low, amused sound that warmed Simon’s sleepy blood and banished the last shadows of his dream. “Most Shadowhunters are only going to bed now, you know.”

“That’s because most Shadowhunters are certifiable,” Simon grumbled into his pillow.

The bed dipped slightly; Jace’s hand stroked down Simon’s spine, warm even through the duvet. “I don’t know what that means,” Jace said lightly. “But I can think of a dozen things more fun to do than sleep.”

Simon poked his head out of the blankets, suspicious. “Your innuendos will not work on me,” he warned. “I know you’re talking about training, not sex.”

“True,” Jace said brightly—and Simon yelped as the blankets were unceremoniously ripped away, dousing his body in the frigid air. “Now get up! If you’re not in the training room in ten minutes, I’m sending Izzy to come get you.”

Simon nearly fell off the bed in his hurry to scramble upright.

*

“Let’s start with something simple,” Jace said. “Call Simiel to your hand.”

Simon suppressed a sigh and stared at his seraph blade. It had taken him closer to fifteen minutes, not ten, to shower, get dressed (he’d found the spare clothes he’d long since stashed in the Institute on a shelf in the back of his wardrobe) and make his way down to the apartment’s third and lowest floor, and while he’d usually be excited to be experimenting with telekinesis, he really, _really_ wanted some coffee first.

But breakfast came _after_ the crack-of-dawn training, apparently, so he focused on the _adamas_ blade and tried to will it to move.

Even if he’d had coffee, it would have been hard to concentrate; Simon’s curiosity had him itching to examine every inch of the floor Jace called the _palaestra_. There was indeed a pool, which had flabbergasted Clary so much yesterday; not Olympic-sized, but nothing to sneer at, either. He’d gotten a quick glimpse of a workout room that wouldn’t have been out of place in a high-end gym, with punching bags and weights and other body-building equipment, and of course there was the chamber they were in now, a smaller replica of the training room at the Institute, with the same polished wood floors and high ceiling. But where the hooks and shelves and racks lining the walls of the Institute’s training room were weighted down with weaponry, here almost all of them were empty, holding the armoury of only three Shadowhunters, instead of an Institute’s worth. Given that there were five bedrooms upstairs and the room had probably been built for an armoury of corresponding size, Simon was forced to assume that Shadowhunters gained even more sharp pointy things as they grew older, because Alec, Jace and Isabelle’s collection didn’t come close to filling 3/5s of the space.

Unless they’d stashed most of their weapons in their bedrooms?

“Simon,” Jace said patiently, “concentrate.”

Simon squinted at the blade. Despite how everything had gone to Hell since he’d discovered the Shadow World, Simiel was still his only bonded blade. You had to kill with a seraph blade to bind it to you, as Simon had killed the Forsaken—a Light Worlder driven mad and turned into a monster when Valentine poisoned him with runes—and Simon was kind of grateful he hadn’t yet had to kill anyone or anything else. Simiel had been special even before that, though, because it was an _armask_ _ō_ sword, a blade given to and named after a loved one—given to and named after Simon, by Jace. It meant that Jace could touch Simiel without being burned, as bonded blades burned almost everyone but the Shadowhunters who owned them, and it meant that Jace’s love for him was in the blade, a power like no other. Simon had lost count of the times that love had saved him, blazing out of Simiel like the light of a sun—it had driven back the vampires at the Dumort, and the Silent Brothers in the Bone City, and two weeks ago it had even seared the Greater Demon Abigor until It screamed…

But right now Simiel was lying on a long table meant for the dissembling of weapons, not doing anything at all. Not even twitching, for all Simon’s focus.

Simon threw up his hands “I don’t know how to do this!”

“So think about it.” Jace raised an eyebrow. “How did you do it before?”

“Without thinking about it,” Simon snarked.

Jace’s other eyebrow went up.

“I mean it. I never thought about it, it just—happened. Whenever I needed a weapon _right now_ —there it was, in my hand.” When he’d been caught in Abbadon’s grip, lifted upside-down off the floor; when he’d been held against Valentine’s chest, cradled as if the man cared about his son as more than a weapon…

Simon shook the memory away, trying to ignore the strange, uneasy feeling it evoked in him. “I—”

_“Iaoth!”_

Light scattered away from Jace’s seraph blade as it swung towards Simon’s face, streaking like a star—

And slowed. Even as Simon registered the movement the motion of Jace’s arm decelerated rapidly, becoming slower and slower as if the air around the sword had become thick and viscous, resisting the swing. Faster than thought the speed of Jace’s attack had become glacial, the gleaming edge of his blade crossing millimetres in what felt like hours. It was as if someone had hit the slow-motion button on reality.

Simon tilted his head, inhumanly indifferent to the proceedings. Jace’s lips were still parted, still shaping the name of the angel he’d invoked into his blade, but Simon’s attention was elsewhere; he could hear the song in Jace’s sword, the runes that made it more than a chunk of crystal, made it _magic_. They blazed in his mind’s eye: _enkeli_ , which he knew—the Mark of angelic power, of course it would be in a seraph blade—but more, so many more runes that he’d had no names for a breath ago but that now rang in his skull like golden bells, deafening, resonant; _kuilu_ and _illido_ , _nuire_ and _liosul,_ _canza_ and _aiwotan,_ _vas_ and _isekheth, xahutzen, nisindra, sixoshe, an_ _ō_ —Marks for harm and holiness, for injury and incurability, Marks to change the shape of the blade according to its wielder’s will and Marks to give the weapon a tiny spark of consciousness, Marks to make the _adamas_ a vessel for some small part of an angel’s power and the Mark that meant _Iaoth_ , the particular angel this blade called on—so many Marks.

For some endless stretch of time, Simon stood still and listened to the choir that was the culmination of all those songs. It sang of honour and war, of blood and ichor, of demons slain and glory gained, and it was a radiant thing, a hymn to indifferent angels and a dream of a future where the shadows had no teeth. It was a song of defence and a song of death, as double-edged as the blade that housed it, terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible—

And it did not reach him.

Time started again and Simon turned Iaoth aside as glass turned water, needing no gesture, barely needing to will it. The seraph blade ripped out of Jace’s fingers and shot away like a bullet, burying itself, vibrating, in the far wall; caught by surprise, Jace almost stumbled, but before he could do even that Simon slid his power into the songs adorning his _aikane_ ’s body like fingers into a glove and Jace froze like Niobe, froze as if turned to golden marble. In less time than it would take to say his name, he was utterly still.

Utterly _stilled._

Simon’s mouth was suddenly very, very dry.

For a long, breathless moment Simon thought that maybe time had stopped again, because he wasn’t sure that Jace was even breathing. But finally his _aikane_ gave a shuddery sigh, and licked his lips. Simon found himself watching the gesture a little too intently. “All things considered,” Jace said hoarsely, “I probably should have seen that coming.”

Simon didn’t answer, couldn’t answer; he was so far beyond Jace he could hardly hear him, lost in the roaring rush of sound that wasn’t sound, the orphic realisations that were coming harder and faster the longer he kept hold of Jace’s Marks, realisations that were beyond words or metaphor. For the first time he almost understood what he was doing and how he was doing it, almost understood what the Marks were and how they did what they did, and it was entrancing, hypnotising, numinous. Simon had been hearing the Angel’s runes as music for a while now but it wasn’t that simple or that complicated; they were a _language_ , a cross between music notes and hieroglyphs and kanji, each Mark not a letter but a concept, a sound-symbol that meant _agility_ or _deflect_ or _heal_ —and all of Jace’s runes together made a new song that was purely Jace, a kind of discarnate signature, like instruments coming together in a cantata—

He could hear them all when he focussed, pick out the individual instruments, _santalana azo desviar enia tharros_ , dozens of them,  each one meant to hone Jace into a better weapon, a better killer, singing strength and speed into his blood and bone, better aim and soundless steps and courage in battle and more, so much more—

_(He remembers once asking Jace if the Nephilim were human, and now he has his answer: no, no they’re not, not once they play the Marks over their skin and take that music into themselves, not once they let it shape them change them rewrite their DNA into celestial symphonies—_

_Well, and so? Simon’s not feeling very human either, just now—)_

He dove into the music, skimming songs, focussing on a single Mark for a moment before moving on to the next, examiningabsorbingreaffirming his dominion over each and leaping to the next. They were aural jewels, arias and chorales that only he could hear, scribed all over Jace’s body in a runic ricercar; _libratum silencieux celeritas suplete fasthet_ , all of them beautiful, all of them Jace’s. All of them _Simon’s_ , because this, what he was doing—it wiped all meaning from Jace’s Marks, stripped them clean and wrote it new, so that every rune meant _Simon_ , every Mark resonated with _him_ , with his willwantdesire; they hummed like tuning forks and the note they hummed was him, the song they sang was his, they were an orchestra but he was their conductor and they were—

_You are—_

**Mine.**

It hit Simon like a bullet, like a lightning bolt; a rush of power, an _awareness_ of power that took his breath away. He willed it with a thought and Jace’s arm lifted from his side, so easy, as easy as anything; _voyance enia accuratio_ _pari_ answering Simon’s desire and raising Jace’s forearm-elbow-upper arm to shoulder-height and Simon was nearly overcome by a thick, heady heat, an almost dizzying rush—

_I can do anything to you._

The thought should have horrified him. It didn’t.

Jace was breathing hard, and Simon could feel him shuddering, the tiny, almost invisible trembling pulling ever so slightly at Simon’s hold. His eyes were all pupil, bright gold almost wholly eclipsed by black, and Simon wanted to bite him.

“Simon—”

Simon cocked his head, amusement flowing through him like dark wine. “Yes?” he purred, and it was intoxicating, the thought-realisation-understanding that he could play Jace like a marionette, like an avatar in a game—he wondered how hard it would be to edit Jace so that Simon could control his voice, too, which runes he would have to Mark on Jace’s lips and tongue and throat—

“I—” Jace closed his eyes, and Simon felt a flicker of annoyance; he wanted to see Jace’s eyes, wanted to see and drink in his every reaction. Coolly, he made a note to scribe stitch-tiny runes over Jace’s eyelids too; maybe a row of _voyances_ , for irony’s sake. “I—”

“Stuttering, Jace?” Simon purred. “That’s not like you.”

Jace _whimpered_. The sound plunged into Simon’s gut like a dagger still hot from the forge and he laughed, delighted; with a twitch of a finger he lowered Jace’s arm again—then made a fist and _pulled_ , jerking Jace forward by the _tharros_ Mark on his chest, letting loose the blond’s arms and legs so Jace could scramble to stay upright. His body pressed against Simon’s and Simon locked his limbs in place again, held him tight, held him _easily_ as Jace’s breath came in quick, shuddery gasps, panting against Simon’s mouth.

His eyes were still closed.

“You know, you never did tell me what _harpagmos_ meant,” Simon murmured. “I had to find out from Luke, of all people.” The knife of hunger had melted in his belly, become a pool of molten steel that was bleeding through his body, hot and liquid. “But I know what it means now.” He raised his hand and stroked Jace’s cheek, felt him tremble beneath the touch and revelled in it.

He brushed his lips open-mouthed over his _aikane_ ’s jaw. “You steal your lover away and make them yours,” he breathed. “Two months in the wilderness and a _parastathentes_ Mark to bind you. That’s right, isn’t it?”

Jace was beyond speech. Simon laughed softly and nipped him, hard enough to make the blond gasp. “Imagine how easy it would be,” Simon whispered, and Jace was shaking, shivering, “for me to steal you away. Right now.” He smirked. “I could walk you out the door like a doll.”

Jace whimpered again, a sound that could have been pleasure or pain, and Simon heard an answering sound—lower, deeper, more bestial—come from his own throat in answer. Suddenly he badly wanted to look into Jace’s eyes, to see and name the emotion there, and he slid his hand into Jace’s hair, tangling his fingers in it.

“Look at me, Jace,” he murmured, steel sheathed in velvet. He pulled Jace’s head back by his hair until the honey-gold of his throat grew taut, bared and silken and just begging for Simon’s teeth to mark it. _“Look at me!”_

And he did, opened his eyes as though no part of him, even those unMarked, could resist Simon’s will. His irises were a mere rim of gilt around dilated pupils, and when he looked at Simon the expression on his face might have been fear or desire, aphrodisia or terror, and Simon found he didn’t care which because it looked so fucking beautiful on him—

The moment he thought that his mind split in two, one glorying and one horrified, and in an instant horror overcame delight. It was like waking up from a nightmare, a nightmare that felt like a dream until the sunlight touched it, burnished it, set it alight; Simon let go of Jace instantly, hair and runes, almost _flung_ the awareness-hold-power away from himself. The music of Jace’s Marks snapped into silence and Simon jerked back, away from Jace, away with gorge rising in his throat and so fucking horrified—

Horrified by how much he’d _loved_ it—

Jace looked at him, and his expression changed. “No,” he said, striding forward, following Simon back, “no, don’t you dare,” and Simon’s back hit the wall and Jace pressed flushed against him and caught his wrists and—

And _kissed_ him—

Simon snarled, instinctive, unthinking, and Jace broke the kiss to snarl back at him, his beautiful face twisted into something animal, something without fear, something glorious. “No,” Jace snarled, “you can’t have him, he’s _ours,”_ and before Simon could respond Jace took his mouth again, hot and hard and Simon’s blood ignited, came afire under Jace’s lips. He fought Jace’s grip and it only tightened, Jace’s nails digging into the skin of his wrists and casting stars behind Simon’s eyes, but he couldn’t make himself stop. He struggled harder and thrilled at Jace’s strength, felt it burn through him like absinthe and molten sugar, thick and sweet and poisonous. He bit Jace, fighting him, tasting blood and swallowing it down and oh God it was good, so good, he heard himself laughing like a maddened thing and Jace drank it out of his mouth, held Simon pinned and the fire of him, the fierceness holding him down and claiming him seared brands under Simon’s skin, forged the shape of him anew so he couldn’t be lost, couldn’t lose himself in the dark and the horror.

 _This is your body and this is your blood and all of you is **ours** —_he heard it as clearly as if Jace had said it aloud and he moaned, the tension sweeping out of him, draining away—he stopped fighting, relaxed into his body, _yes—_

 _Yes this here I am, this is me and I am yours_ —

The nail-marks on his wrists throbbed in time with his heart, stigmata anchoring him in reality, in sanity, in his skin, pain melting into the slide of Jace’s tongue and lips, the pressure of Jace’s body against his, and Simon felt his eyes roll back with blade-sharp bliss, heard himself moan—

And Jace let him go, released his wrists to cradle his face. The kiss softened, then came apart like dripping honey.

“He’s ours,” Jace whispered. His lips brushed Simon’s with each word, pollen-soft. “You can’t have him.”

And Simon—panting, shaking, wholly himself again—didn’t have to ask who Jace was talking to.

***

“That,” Izzy said shakily, _“really_ should not have been hot.”

On the other side of the kitchen, Alec was bent over the countertop, his hand clutching the marble with a white-knuckled grip. The coffee mug he’d been about to fill when everything went to Hell downstairs was in shards at his feet, broken when it had slipped from his nerveless fingers. He was panting and flushed and humiliatingly aware that his sister knew exactly why he didn’t want to turn around and face her.

“No,” he managed, speaking aloud because it helped focus his thoughts, helped him limit what of him darted through the _agela_ bond. “It shouldn’t have.” But Seraphs and Fallen, it had been. It had been Jace’s shocked fear that had pulled Alec and Isabelle from their awareness of themselves, but it was his terrible, searing desire that had swept them under.

They’d all been there. Inside Jace. They’d all felt the horror of being caged in a body that wouldn’t answer, felt the nauseating disorientation of being _moved_ , played with like a toy. The sickening helplessness of it, the knowledge that there was no defence against it, no way to prevent or stop it—the violation—

It defied description.

And then—then, when Alec and Izzy had been struggling to disentangle themselves from the fear, trying to get back to their bodies so they could get downstairs and _stop this_ —then some twisted alchemy had turned the fear to gold. Not all of it, but enough of it. Too much; it had drowned them, blurred the boundaries to non-existence. They’d all felt the hunger, the sheer _need_ , sick and impossible and unbearable, insatiable; every one of them had looked at Simon and _wanted_ too much for words.

_You can’t have him, he’s **ours** —_

They’d all kissed him. Three as one, every one, all three together. Because they’d wanted to. Because they had to. Because he was _theirs_ , not some Fallen-damned angel’s—

Alec took a deep breath, trying to remember how to be himself again.

Isabelle’s cheeks were hot too; she was just as achingly aroused as he was. The awkward embarrassment of knowing that should have cooled his own ardour, but that wasn’t how the _parabatai_ bond worked, and the _agelai_ connection was stronger still than a single _parabatai_ bond had been; instead her desire magnified his, the hunger bouncing back and forth between them like light between a mirror, an image made infinite—

By the Angel, he couldn’t get the taste of Simon out of his mouth. Out of his _head_.

Simon’s mouth under theirs—

He felt Izzy shiver. “Stop it,” she said roughly. “That’s not helping.”

He let her feel his apology. With effort, he let go of the counter and started cleaning up the broken mug, trying to focus on coffee grounds and pottery shards. When that didn’t work, he started reciting all the alphabets he knew backwards, in order of age of invention.

Behind him, Izzy sighed. _*This is normalexpected,*_ he thought with her, not resigned or amused but something of both. She felt his determination to resist and questioned it; he recoiled, outraged, and her silent laughter flickered through them like silver glimpsed through water. Memories flashed, memories that had not belonged to them yesterday but had been gifted them by the bond; Simon’s head thrown back in laughter/thrown back in bliss/his fingers curled tight in sheets as he moaned Jace’s name—

Again Alec recoiled, shoving the memories away, and again he felt-heard his sister’s amusement, knew her query like a question mark engraved on his mind. His answer was wordless but vehement, and she held up her hands in surrender.

“I’m just saying,” she said aloud.

“Well, don’t,” he snapped. “I’m not interested.”

Her eyebrows rose, two calligraphic sweeps of disbelieving ink.

Alec rolled his own eyes and, lacking trash bags for the bin, left the mess of the broken mug in the sink. “He did it again.”

She sobered instantly, her teasing chased away by a revulsion Alec could feel burning his own throat. Her uncertainty was his, their confusion mirrored twins; neither of them knew what to think when it came to Simon’s new power. Isabelle believed Simon wouldn’t intentionally hurt them, but they both recognised that Simon didn’t seem to be in control of it. They feared, worried, but their fears only looped and tied in knots; neither they nor Jace had answers or even suggestions. There was nothing to say: they would just have to hope that Simon could learn control, and learn it fast.

 _*And never use it against us.*_ It was hard to deny Jace’s unshakable certainty, now that they felt it as if it were their own, but Alec had practise at cordoning off his self from Jace’s, and he could not help being wary.

_‘I could walk you out the door like a doll.’_

Alec swallowed hard and started making toast. The toaster they’d bought yesterday, but Alec had picked up the bread and some other basics on his morning run from a little 24-hour store a few blocks away. He concentrated on the sensation of the knife in his hand as he sliced bread, on its smell and the tiny, cheerful _ting!_ the toaster made as he pushed the button down. They helped anchor him, reminded him that he was not the one sitting at the kitchen island and longing for coffee, or the one making his way up from the _palaestra_ —even though he could feel the island’s smooth counter under his hands, feel his legs bending as he walked up the stairs…

It would be a while before their connection settled. It had been a lot like this in the days after he and Jace had become _parabatai_ —not quite as intense, not quite so immersive, but fundamentally the same. It would get easier.

Izzy got up when the toast popped. “Go sit down,” she ordered. “You’re thinking so loudly I can’t hear my own thoughts. Literally.”

“Very funny,” Alec said wryly. He sat down, but watched her carefully; it was always dangerous to let her near the food.

“I can hear you, you know!” Izzy said without turning around. But her amusement underscored the words like a flash of warm fire, and Alec felt her grin on his own face.

The toast wasn’t bad, but nothing like the bread their mother baked. Izzy pushed away thoughts of their parents the moment they sparked to life in Alec’s head, with an inelegant mental _shove_ that was nonetheless more than Alec had been able to manage this soon after bonding with Jace. She felt his surprise and he felt her smugness, braiding and blurring together like smearing paint, and they might have gotten lost in it if Jace hadn’t been coming closer, the proximity strengthening the third side of the triangle and distracting them.

Alec looked up. Jace was a star in his mind, a bright and blazing anchor point of Alec’s solar system; there was no way to forget or lose track of him, especially not now. But it was to Simon Alec looked, unable not to, gaze and attention dragged to where Jace’s lover stood in the kitchen doorway, and all Alec could think was

 _He’s **ours**_.

He dropped his gaze hurriedly, his cheeks burning and his mouth dry. _He’s ours_. Strong emotions strengthened the bond, and Jace’s fear and desire downstairs had made them one—one mind-heart-body-soul that had pinned Simon in place, held him and kissed him and dragged him back from the angel’s grasp. It had been all of them, three-in-one, who’d snarled those words and dared Simon’s angel to challenge them.

_You can’t have him, he’s **ours**!_

“Alec bought bread and cereal,” Izzy said cheerfully, when no one spoke. Jace was a question, reassuring and trying to soothe and nervous beneath it all; where Simon couldn’t see the _agelai_ traded thoughts and emotions like fish darting and glittering in dark water. There was no longer need to converse aloud. “You can help yourself, Simon.”

“Thanks.”

Izzy drew Simon into a bright chatter about Light Worlder food and where to get it and what kind of things they would need to buy now there was no brownie housekeeping service to look after them. Alec tuned them out and focussed on Jace, catching him in a net of hooked-together question marks and crossed exclamation points.

_*He’s not we-I-mine, we-us-I didn’t mean it, don’t want him—*_

Jace was still shaken—they were all still shaken—but not about this, apparently; he dismissed Alec’s assurances with a bubble of silent laughter. He was happy, Alec realised then, almost overjoyed, and after a beat Alec understood why: Jace’s _parabatai_ had stood up to an angel for Jace’s lover. They’d called Simon theirs and dragged him back from the angel’s hold. How could Jace be anything but happy about that?

 _*He didn’t hurt us,*_ Jace said, in response to Alec’s thought-memory of being frozen, held, caught by their Marks. _*He broke free of it rather than hurt us.*_

Jace’s relief and hope warmed Alec’s cold fears—because it was true, wasn’t it? Simon _hadn’t_ hurt them. Not exactly. Not quite.

Not physically, anyway.

Alec pondered this while the others ate breakfast, aware through Izzy and Jace of Simon’s raw nervousness, his reluctance to speak or make eye contact. Simon felt guilty, clearly, as he _should_ —but it was true that he’d woken up from whatever had taken him over. Alec couldn’t shrug off what had happened, couldn’t pretend that it hadn’t—but it had to be a good sign, didn’t it, that Simon had not done anything irreversible? That he _could_ wake up, instead of losing himself completely? He’d sent Ioath into the wall, not into Jace, as he could have—

All three _agelai_ froze as Alec’s realization streaked through them: Simon had sent Ioath into the wall. _He’d sent Ioath into the wall_.

“What?” Simon asked, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

It took them a moment to disentangle themselves enough for Jace to speak. “I didn’t think of it at the time,” he said. “But you—downstairs, you moved Ioath.”

“Your seraph blade?” Simon asked. “Um…” He glanced between the Shadowhunters. “Is that really a big deal? Comparatively? To all the other…?” He waved his hand vaguely.

“Maybe not comparatively,” Alec said. “But in and of itself?”

“Moving your own bonded blade is one thing,” Izzy agreed. “All Shadowhunters can do that—”

“—just not to the degree you can,” Jace continued.

“But someone _else’s_ —” Alec.

“—blade?” Jace.

“A _bonded_ blade?” Izzy added. “You shouldn’t be able to—”

“—even touch it.” Alec again.

They all paused. Simon’s eyes were very wide. “Is this an _agela_ thing?” he asked tentatively.

“The—”

“—finishing each other’s—”

“—sentences? Oh—”

“—sure. It’s because—”

“—it’s so new. It’s a little—”

“—hard to think apart—”

“—just now.” Because strong emotions blurred the lines between minds, and between all the shock and excitement and concern pinging back and forth, there might as well be no lines at all.

Clumsily, we-I-us tried to fumble themselves apart, but instead braided tighter together. “See if he can touch it,” came out of all three throats in unison, driven by one awareness.

“Okay, I’m getting seriously freaked out now,” Simon said. “Can you guys quit that? Please? I’ve had enough X-Files for one morning without adding any more.”

“I’m trying,” we-I-us said, one voice from three throats.

 _“I?”_ Simon echoed, suddenly pale. “Did you—did you guys just refer to yourselves as _I?”_

It was quite possibly too late to worry about freaking him out.

We-I-us remembered suddenly how making the toast—touching, hearing, doing something his _agelai_ were not—had anchored Alec. They tried it—slapped Izzy’s hand on the counter, bit Jace’s tongue, ran the tap and held Alec’s wrist under the water—and it worked, the separate sensations felt by all but redefining the boundaries of their bodies so that they snapped neatly apart like a clockwork toy. Alec turned off the water without thinking about it, almost dizzy with being one-in-three again instead of three-in-one.

This was going to take some getting used to.

Simon was frowning at them. He peered at Jace. “Are you you again?”

Jace smiled at him, and Alec felt his fondness for Simon echo in his own chest. “I’m always me. Even like that.”

Simon groaned and laid his head on the counter. “It’s too early to think about how that works, okay, I can’t handle thinking about your freaky Vulcan mind meld right now.” He turned his head and pleaded with his eyes. “Coffee?”

Jace rolled his eyes. “You have legs,” he said dryly. “Go use them.”

Simon pouted playfully but got up. Alec shifted out of his way to let him at the coffee pot.

“But to get back to the point,” Izzy said. From the bracelet-sheath half-hidden beneath her sleeve she drew a seraph blade. “Simon, think fast!”

Simon whirled, his arm snapping up reflexively. He caught the crystal dowel and stood there, blinking. “Um. Nice throw?”

The Shadowhunters stared at him, all but open-mouthed.

“What?”

Alec glanced at Izzy. “ ‘Think fast’?”

“It’s a Light Worlder thing,” Jace answered for her.

Izzy was still staring at Simon. “Your hand’s not burning.”

“Should it be…? Wait.” Comprehension dawned, and his gaze snapped to his own hand. “Wait, you told me about that—no one else can touch a bonded blade, right? That’s why you’re all—oh my God.”

He dropped it then, maybe panicking; swore and tried to catch it.

He missed—and it halted in mid-air a foot from the floor.

Simon froze. They all did.

“Well,” Izzy said after a long pause. “I’m going to want that back eventually, you know.”

“Um,” Simon said. “Right.” He bit his lip, staring at the hovering seraph blade.

After another minute or so, he tentatively raised his hand—and the sword rose in sync with it. _Like a puppet on a string,_ the _agelai_ thought with a flicker of unease; but then the blade leapt to Simon’s palm and the moment was gone.

Simon tossed it back to Isabelle as though he couldn’t wait to be rid of it; she plucked it neatly from the air and vanished it back into its sheath.

“How did you do that?” Alec asked finally.

Simon flinched. “I—I have to get ready for school.” He looked at the floor. “I’m sorry. For—before.”

“Simon—” Jace started to rise from his seat, but Simon was gone like a ghost, Shadowhunter-fast, and even Alec knew, because Jace knew, that the line of his back meant he wanted no one to follow.

 _*He’s developing quickly,*_ they thought together. _*Less than two months and he can call on the speed in his blood at will. It’s impressive…*_

Alec pushed away from the counter. In the half-second it took to do that he and his _agelai_ agreed on a plan for the day; to call Magnus, to see Xia’s body and the place where she’d died, and start looking for her killer. The Shadow World slowed down during the day, but it never truly stopped; the wolves would be out in their human shapes, and in the knowes and clanhomes, hidden from the light, at least some of the faeries and vampires would be awake. There would be people for the Shadowhunters to talk to.

His _agelai_ felt his nervousness at the thought of calling Magnus, but didn’t comment, only offering wordless support that he drank in gratefully. Magnus… Magnus.

Raziel, _Magnus_.

It was actually easier, if not much less terrifying, to think about Simon. To remember Ioath sent flying from Jace’s hand, Isabelle’s seraph blade hanging in the air.

He could control the blades in their hands, the very Marks on their bodies. When Simon came into his full power—what Shadowhunter would be able to stand against him?

 _Raziel,_ Alec prayed, _let it be that no Shadowhunter ever needs to._

*

Simon had left for school by the time Alec got up the nerve to call Magnus. The phone was lead in his head, and his grief for Magnus’ loss was an iron ball in his throat, silencing all words. Not that Alec had any idea what he was going to say, any idea of how to ask Magnus to please show them his friend’s—sister’s? Had Xia been more like a sister, if she’d been raising a child Magnus considered his?—body.

It physically hurt to be this helpless. Alec wanted so badly to _help_ somehow, to do _something_ to ease the terrible rawness he’d glimpsed in Magnus’ eyes yesterday—but all he could offer was some hope of vengeance, if they were able to find the murderer. All he knew how to do was kill, in the end; he had no idea how to heal something that could not be Marked away.

He hated himself for that, so much he thought he might choke on it.

In his ear the ringing tone fell silent as someone picked up. “Hello?”

Alec started. “Catarina? _Ashipu,”_ he added belatedly, remembering what she’d told him about warlock courtesy. “Where’s—is Magnus all right?”

“Alexander.” It was not a question; he thought for a moment that she sounded surprised. When she spoke again, her voice was gentle. “No, Alec. I’m afraid he’s not very well right now. Can I give him a message?”

Instantly, desperately, Alec hoped Catarina was lying to him. He would rather Magnus didn’t want to talk to him—would rather Magnus blame him as he deserved for the death of his kin—than think that Magnus was so destroyed by loss he couldn’t even answer the phone. He’d rather Magnus _hated_ him than that.

 _He should, anyway_ , Alec thought, his knuckles going white on the phone. Self-loathing was bitter as sulphur on his tongue, sour and sick in his stomach; the heat of it charred his bones until they threatened to splinter apart. _I’m responsible. I was the patrol leader, I was the one they left in charge. It happened on my watch._

_I’m the one who didn’t stop it._

“I…” Alec had to swallow twice before he could go on, scrabbling for words like mis-matched jigsaw pieces and shoving them together into some semblance of a comprehensible query. “Could you—maybe you could help? I—we—need to see Xia’s body. And where she died. So we can start looking for whoever killed her.”

Catarina’s breathing hitched, and the small sound was a knife to the gut; too late, Alec realised that Xia was obviously Catarina’s kin as well, that of course such blunt phrasing would hurt her.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted, closing his eyes and hating, _hating_ himself. “I didn’t mean—”

“No,” Catarina said, composed once more. “It’s all right, Alexander. I understand.” She was quiet for a moment, and Alec felt the silence taut as a garrotte against his throat, twisting tighter and tighter.

Just before he started to bleed, Catarina said, “I think Magnus told you that the Spiral Court is arriving today.”

Alec nodded, belatedly remembering that she couldn’t see him. “He did, yes.”

“Then if you could wait until this afternoon, one of the Court representatives will be able to show you…everything,” Catarina said carefully. “Would that be acceptable?”

“Yes,” Alec said quietly. “That would be fine. Thank you.”

“If that’s all?” She did not say that he was welcome, and he couldn’t blame her.

“Yes. Wait,” Alec said quickly before she could hang up, “wait. Could you… Could you tell Magnus that I…” That he what? What did people say at a time like this? The Nephilim had the mourning runes, and ritualised responses that differed depending on how well you’d known the deceased and how they had died—but none of those seemed appropriate. None of those seemed like _enough_.

_I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’d do anything to stop you hurting; I’d drag time from its moorings with my fingernails and hurl it back if I could, make this all undone…_

“I’ll tell him you asked after him,” Catarina said gently, when Alec had nothing to give. Just like always. “Thank you, Alexander.”

She hung up before he could tell her she owed him curses, not thanks.

He let the phone fall to his side and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ease the headache building behind his eyes. He couldn’t believe he’d asked if Magnus was all right.

_Of course he’s not okay why do you keep asking that by the Angel you’re so stupid—_

Izzy pounced on the thought and shredded it like Church with an abandoned sock; Jace snatched away Alec’s despairing self-loathing and set it on fire.

_*Not true nottrue lie lie lie don’t you dare think that feel that FALSE!*_

Alec didn’t fight them. He didn’t know how. He took in their light like a broken prism, scattering it in a monotone rainbow, seven shades of black and grey to choke on, drown in, as suffocating as an ash cloud and a hundred times as incendiary. They loved him and it burned, volcanic, acidic, so he bent away from their love as if from a blow, because it might as well have been. They didn’t understand, and he couldn’t explain.

He had been empty long before Simon’s angel tore him open.

Now he let them think they had won, descending deep within himself, where his _agelai_ did not go, and locked the truth behind seven gates. When he ascended from that place, like Inanna from Irkalla, he was able to pretend, for a little while, that they were right. That everything was fine, and all they had to worry about was what to do with the free hours suddenly fallen into their hands like foreign coinage.

Because free time was inimical to being a Shadowhunter, but the _agela_ had no duties during the day; patrols weren’t necessary when demons couldn’t manifest and most Downworlders hid inside their homes. The _agela_ couldn’t spar, because not even Jace thought handling deadly weapons was a good idea when they kept losing track of whose arm was whose, and they couldn’t sleep without confusing their internal clocks even more than they were already, but it was simply inconceivable that they just sit around and do nothing.

It was Izzy who thought it first, with a grin like the flare of a light-house: bright, dazzling, and warning of hidden perils. “Let’s go shopping!”

“By the Angel, woman, didn’t we do enough of that yesterday?” Jace mock-swooned backwards onto the sofa. “I feel weak just contemplating it.”

“She’s right, though,” Alec admitted reluctantly. “There’s all kinds of things we still need.”

Jace sighed, greatly put-upon, but the burst of firework-excitement through the _agela_ bond gave him away. “I guess it’s off to the Goblin Market we go, then.”

*

The general consensus of the Nephilim was that the Goblin Market didn’t exist—but if by some Fallen-worked chance it _did_ , then it was certainly not a place where good young purebloods were supposed to go. The Goblin Market, they said, was a modern-day den of iniquity, a place where the most monstrous denizens of the knowes sold the disobedient young Nephilim children they’d kidnapped from their beds to vampires looking for blood-slaves, a place that traded in mundane souls and demonic drugs and the tears of the dying. It was where warlocks went to buy the blood of virgins and werewolves bought children’s hearts by the pound for the pack barbeque, and if a young Shadowhunter were foolish enough to set foot there, they would be summarily dissected for potion ingredients.

Jace had found the New York Gate by the end of his first month in the city.

It was true, Alec thought as they walked through the Gate, that the Market had its dark side. There really were mundanes being bought and sold as _pommes de sang_ on an auction block, and vampires eying them like cakes in a display—but the mundies weren’t the victims of some slave ring, they were selling themselves all willing. The butcher stalls didn’t sell the meat of anything that could talk, and Alec had never even glimpsed anyone who traded in souls, however morbidly fascinating that would have been.

But for all that, the Goblin Market was a wonder. Like the Silent City, faerie knowes, and Atlantis, the Market wasn’t so much a physical place as it was a pocket dimension with multiple entrances. The Gates were scattered across the world, and they were never locked because the Market never closed. At any time of the day or night you could step through a Gate and find the Market awake and bustling with people of all descriptions, buying and selling wonders—singing mice in belled cages, telescopes that looked into other worlds, necklaces of snowflakes and fireflies. Every stall was draped in colour, ribbons and braids of feathers and strings of coins, and everywhere were Shadow Worlders haggling, laughing, duelling with song, dancing for runestones, blowing glass into iridescent balloon animals for slack-jawed children. Here were sorcerers from Pankhaia selling books of their island’s magic, there a pair of selkies making sushi for hungry customers, and there a stall selling baby rainbows in quartz jars. A trio of vampire girls danced with streamers of red and white silk for the crowd, safely unburnt despite the bright light. No one knew who had created the Market, but there was always room for new vendors and vampires and fae alike walked with impunity beneath its never-setting false sun. And as it belonged to no one, no one policed the Market—but then, no one needed to. Those who cheated or stole from the Market, those who started fights or wrought violence here, never went home. When they walked through the Gates to leave, they vanished, never emerging on the other side.

Only newcomers were foolish enough to flout the Market’s laws.

Alec and his _agelai_ knew the rules, but even Jace was on his best behaviour here. The Goblin Market was a fluid, ever-shifting place, and there were parts of it where Shadowhunters were not welcome—areas that would disappear if they tried to enter. If a Shadowhunter tried to walk down an aisle that led somewhere she was not wanted, she would find herself walking instead towards a stall selling glass flowers, or hyperactive puppies built of paper, or flying carpets. When the ground shivered under their feet, the _agela_ knew to turn around and go another way, just as they knew to accept no gifts, to pay for everything and never say ‘thank you’.

There were rules to these things.

But if you followed the rules all was well, and Alec tried to make himself relax as they made their way through the crowd. There were so many things the three of them needed to set up their own household—all those things that had been taken for granted at the Institute were now under their own purview, and it was a dizzying list.

They bought weapons first, because that was the most immediate need; they no longer had access to the Institute armoury, after all. There was something thrillingly illicit about stringing an elfin bow and testing the draw; the Institute kept no Downworlder-made weapons, but now—now Alec could buy whatever he wanted, bring home whatever he wanted. He could stock their apartment’s armoury with nothing _but_ Downworlder-made weapons if he wanted to.

 _*You could,*_ Jace agreed, feeling the balance of a silver-streaked dagger as Izzy laughed at the thought. _*But if you start favouring a faerie’s glass needles over a good honest seraph blade, I’m staging an intervention.*_

 _*You don’t even know what that is!*_ Isabelle said, although instantly both boys did, knowing it as she thought of it.

 _*I know Simon’s always threatening me with one,*_ Jace mused, and that set Izzy off again, giggling over the display of clip-on claws.

It felt so fragile, this tentative playfulness. Jace mocked and spun jokes out of the air, Isabelle laughed and tossed her hair, Alec smiled and bantered with the vendors, but it was all as brittle and sharp as a Seelie’s obsidian blade. Between them they traded fears and anxieties like shuttlecocks and throwing knives; what would the Inquisitor think of their parents’ decision to disown Jace? Would she agree with them? Would the _agela_ bond be enough to protect Alec and Isabelle from the fallout, if it came? What if it wasn’t? What would she do to them?

_Marks flayed from the skin, white-hot pokers singeing fragile eyelashes—_

Isabelle glimpsed huge, beribboned moths for sale in tiny bamboo cages and thought of Simon, wondered if the Clave might just lock him up instead of executing him, and the pain and horror scoured them like a desert wind. _No, no, they can’t—_

And for Clary, a different kind of cage, one of steel words and cruel will; the Clave would take her the way they took the orphaned children of Shadowhunters who had turned their backs on the Nephilim, force her to drink from the Cup or bear a Shadowhunter child to take her place in their ranks. _*If they don’t just kill her outright.*_ She knew too much; if the _agela_ gave away just how much…

 _*Olianthe wouldn’t let them take her,*_ Isabelle thought-said. _*The Seelie Court would go to war with the Clave if they tried to interfere with a princess’_ olor _.*_

Except the Clave didn’t seem to care about a budding war with the warlocks, so why would they care about one with the Seelie Court?

They looked at the Market and tried to imagine it ravaged by war, smashed by Valentine’s hatred. Because Valentine was a shard of ice stabbed deep in their thoughts, one that refused to melt. What if Xia’s death _did_ belong in Valentine’s ledger; what if he _was_ the one trying to divide his allied enemies from each other?

What if that madman was not fled—a problem for other, more experienced Shadowhunters in some other part of the world—but still bedded down in _agela_ Sariel’s city like a malignant tumour, their responsibility to find and cut out and bring to justice?

 _*Because that went so well last time,*_ Jace said, bitter as rue.

It was Isabelle who fought to bring some of the light and colour of the Market into their sharp-toothed fog of worry. She took the sights—a huge tank with a pod of merai wave-dancing for the Market’s visitors in silver arcs and gem-scaled shimmers; a rare faerie child with a dragonet riding like a green raven on his shoulder; a stall built entirely of rose-entwined trellises—and wove them into the blades of a fan, blowing away the thick smog in their heads, netting their fears and locking them in an iron-bound chest.

_*Look seesee it all so beautiful so pretty so many people happy, happy and safe because of what we do, what we’ve done, pride and joy cutting through the dark like a phoenix. Let it go fornow, set it all aside, try and smile. Just try.*_

They tried. They went to the apothecaries, where Alec bargained with an Anjana for all the potions and tisanes any sensible Shadowhunter household kept in good supply while his _agelai_ amused themselves buying witch-candy for Simon and Clary. The Anjana was a skilled haggler, her pupils glowing bright blue as she argued, her shimmering wings beating hard with agitation. She was only half a foot tall, and had to hover above the counter to deal with Alec, but she was fierce and clearly used to getting her own way. But eventually they agreed on a price both could live with, and Alec carefully gave her his finger to shake on it.

The Merchant Adventurer at Bank of America had set Alec up with a Light Worlder debit card—he’d understood about half of her explanation about credit cards, and that had been enough to convince him he didn’t want one—but the Market was no place for Light World money. He, Jace and Isabelle were all carrying hidden purses of celestes and runestones. The former were the most widely accepted coinage in the Shadow World, and the latter were small pebbles and crystals Marked for various properties, good for trade wherever coins were unwanted. Their supplies of both were much smaller by the time they’d finished being fitted for new gear by a Xana seamstress (whose waterfall of fair hair was a _real_ waterfall, the cascading curls pinned in place with a shining silver comb), but Alec was feeling tentatively pleased with himself. They’d gotten so much done, and with their purchases all set to be delivered they didn’t even have to carry heavy packages around with them.

Without exchanging a word aloud, Izzy went to arrange for a brownie housekeeping service for the apartment while Alec and Jace headed to the booksellers. Alec hadn’t been lying when he’d told Simon it would take them years to build up their own library, but getting a head-start on it couldn’t hurt, could it? They had a little while yet before they needed to get going; what better way to spend it than looking at books from all over the world?

Jace ate Every Flavour Beans—Alec finally understood the lightning bolts and snowy owls decorating that particular candy stall—and looked over his _parabatai_ ’s shoulder as Alec reverentially looked through hand-written tomes older than the Institute, soapstone tablets that were modern copies of ones far older, ring-binders of sorcery and Downworlder history. For the first time that day, his mood transmuted into something on the same spectrum as visible light. He never got over the exhilaration of seeing all these books, the impossibly huge variety of them. They were like letters from all over the world addressed to his heart, a cornucopia of friendly voices as eager to teach as he was to learn. All the things there were to read! He could spend his entire life studying and only read a drop of all that was known, and here at the Market were books no Nephilim bookshop would stock, books no pious Nephilim would dream of reading—deckle-edged books documenting the rise of the Nephilim from the point of view of a vampire clan leader in Eastern Europe; leather-bound books of angelology unsanctioned by the Clave; works by Light Worlder philosophers so new the bindings still smelled of glue. Alec was not nearly as pious a Shadowhunter as everyone thought him, because he ached to read them all, to drown in their words and have them drown out the world, to replace everything that confused him with knowledge pure and clear as snowmelt.

And fiction, so much fiction; the _Harry Potter_ books Izzy was obsessed with were here, in a variety of languages and with different covers; and _Lord of the Rings_ —how could a story be a series of films _and_ books? Mundanes had such weird names, too—what kind of a name was Terry Pratchett? Or Diana Wynne Jones? Were the wizards in the Diane Duane books like Gandalf, or more like Magnus?

Magnus… Some of Alec’s simple happiness drained away, thinking of his boyfriend. How could he stand here coveting books like a dragon looking to add to its hoard when Magnus was grieving? When Xia was _dead_ , and probably Elias with her, too?

Two people were dead because Alec had failed, and he was composing poetry to his love of books.

_I was the Institute Head that night. I chose where to patrol, I missed the signs; Xia and Elias’ deaths are my responsibility. And Magnus must know that. He has to live with their loss, and with knowing I could have prevented it._

_By the Angel, what must that feel like?_

Jace hit Alec’s shoulder with his. “Stop that,” he said, in an even tone completely belied by the terrible, bitter anger simmering behind his eyes. Every word was a needle of yew in his mouth. “Magnus doesn’t blame you, because it _wasn’t your fault.”_

Alec’s guilt tore like splinters through his tongue, made it hard to speak. “I should have—”

A blast of negation from his _agelai_ stopped up the words in his mouth, a fierce, uncompromising _NO_ , Thor’s hammer as gavel.

Alec looked back at the books. His enjoyment of them had soured, but maybe there was something here Magnus would like? Something that might make him smile, or at least give him something else to think about for a moment or two, something besides the death of his son…

 _*There’s plenty that_ I _want,*_ Izzy interjected primly, cutting off that train of thought before it could get on the tracks. She mentally pointed to book after book, Light Worlder books Clary had recommended or that looked interesting enough to try on their own merits, and Alec let himself be distracted.

“Do you have any books a warlock might be interested in?” he asked the Yōsei woman manning the stall in careful Japanese. She smiled at him, the epicanthic folds at the corners of her eyes crinkling.

“I think I have a few,” she said warmly in the same language. “Shall we have a look?”

Jace’s attention wandered as Alec examined the books; Alec caught glimpses of their surroundings out of Jace’s eyes every now and then. One person in particular appeared in Alec’s mind’s eye over and over, as if Jace’s attention kept coming back to her; a middle-aged woman whose long cornrow braids brushed the Egyptian fan-axe holstered at her back. It was a particularly fine one, decorated with gold and lapis lazuli like something out of a hieroglyph, its shaft almost as long as Clary was tall, and Alec could hear Jace wondering where she’d gotten it; even the Institute didn’t have one. Jace wouldn’t have even known what it was if Alec hadn’t seen an illustration in a book once. Each time its wielder appeared in Alec’s mind from Jace’s eyes, she was talking to a different person.

Finally Alec looked up from an illumination of Solomon’s Greater Key to poke Jace in the side. “What?”

 _*I keep seeing her,*_ Jace said mind-to-mind. It was never safe to assume any conversation went unheard, in the Market, but no one could eavesdrop on a telepathic communication between _parabatai_. The bond forged by the Angel’s Marks could not be broken into by outsiders. _*All morning. I’d swear by Raziel she hasn’t bought a thing; she’s only talking to everyone interesting.*_

And she pinged the Shadowhunter’s sixth sense for Shadow Worlders—that claircognizance bred into them to spot and identify non-humans, the _skiá-aird_ —oddly. Alec frowned, glancing after her from the corner of his eye to double-check. There was _something_ about her that said she belonged here in the Shadows, a flicker that refused to be pigeon-holed…

 _*Warlock?*_ Izzy suggested, heading back their way. All werewolves _skiárd_ the same— registered the same way to the _skiá-aird_ —as did all vampires and all fae. But warlocks weren’t uniform enough to have one all-encompassing ‘signature’, and they all _skiárd_ a little differently.

The boys sent Izzy their agreement. _*Maybe she’s part of the Spiral Court, out looking for the killer,*_ Alec thought heavily.

“Speaking of,” Jace said, “we should get going.” He nodded at the open book. “Are you buying that?”

He was, and did, asking for it to be delivered to the apartment with all the rest. Any flicker of joy in their little holiday from the real world was gone, wrung like a nightingale’s neck. It was time to go back to their responsibilities.

*

They dropped by the apartment quickly to change into gear—you didn’t wear Shadowhunter gear to the Market if you wanted anyone to talk to you—and headed out of Manhattan and into Brooklyn. Simple glamours circumvented the need for subway passes, and there was no need to worry about anyone trying to sit down in apparently unoccupied seats; Light Worlders couldn’t see a glamoured Shadowhunter, but they could sense him, somehow. Hodge had said that mundanes subconsciously recognised the power in the Angel’s Marks and avoided them; Jace had wondered aloud why they couldn’t avoid demons the same way and save the Nephilim a lot of trouble. But it meant never having to shove through a crowd of Light Worlders because mundanes instinctively got out of the way when they sensed a Shadowhunter nearby, and that had been useful more times than Alec could count.

He was trying to distract himself from the sick nerves—like a stomach-full of ice chips—by thinking about inanities. It wasn’t working. His _agelai_ ’s attempts to do the same were like the flutterings of birds; far away and meaningless. Every rattle of the train’s wheels sounded like manacles, locking him into a dark spiral of guilt; every inch they travelled brought him closer to facing the reality of his mistake, his failure. At least one person had _died_ because he had failed in the one thing that gave his life meaning, the one thing he’d been conceived and born for; hunting demons and keeping the rest of the world safe.

The mourning runes on his arms and back ached like brands, declarations of guilt writ in crimson.

Alec clutched the jade beads around his wrist and choked on brimstone.

When they reached Magnus’ building, there was a woman waiting for them on the doorstep. Izzy, whose _skiá-aird_ was the strongest, _skiárd_ her first, although they didn’t really need the confirmation: _warlock_. She was a short, compact woman whose ochre skin was interrupted by a rainbow of serpentine scales, carving a bald arc over the left side of her skull and snaking down her face and neck to disappear under her shirt. She examined the three Shadowhunters with eyes that had no whites, only a hollow ring of fire against solid black—the eyes of the coastal taipan snake.

“I am Arika Kijarr,” she said when she was finished with her inspection. Her voice had the ghost of an Australian accent hidden in it, but other than that it was inscrutable; none of them could guess whether she was pleased or not with what she saw. “I will be assisting you today.”

After Jace’s Dedication, Alec has asked Magnus to teach him the basics of warlock etiquette, and now all three _agelai_ folded their arms behind their backs and bowed. When they straightened, Alec made a fist with his left hand, covered it with his right, and placed both over his heart. _“Viisaille viisauden,_ Arika _ashipu_.”

Arika’s eyebrows rose, but she touched her index and middle fingertips to her brow and then gestured an arc before her—from left to right, palm up as if indicating a crowd or her surroundings—in the ritual response. _“Viisailta maailmalle,_ Alexander Lightwood.”

Jace and Isabelle unfolded their arms as Alec smiled thinly. “It’s Alexander Sariel, actually, _ashipu_.”

The warlock’s eyebrows rose higher. “Is it now?” She glanced at his siblings. “And these are your _agelai?”_

“Jace Sariel, madam _ashipu_ ,” Jace said smoothly.

“Isabelle Sariel,” Izzy said. “We’re very sorry for your loss, Arika _ashipu.”_

Arika’s unnerving eyes flicked to the crimson mourning runes on Alec’s elbows. “Shadowhunters who proffer mundane apologies and mourn warlocks,” she murmured. “How very nonpareil.” She turned on her heel. “Come. Xia’s body is within.”

She led them into the ground-floor apartment of the building; the _agelai_ weren’t sure whether Magnus owned it or whether the warlocks had ejected the previous occupants, and they didn’t ask. Either way, it was vastly altered from the days when Light Worlders might have lived in it; mirrors of all shapes and sizes had been hung on the walls, fitted together to create a continuous wall of glass in every direction. Even the ceiling had been so covered, so that everywhere the _agelai_ looked hundreds of reflections looked back at them. It would have been dizzying at the best of times, but with the _agela_ bond so new they all had to struggle for a moment to remember who and where they were, to not get lost in the mirrors or each other. Strands of pearls and moonstones had been wound around the frames of the mirrors, and the apartment’s windows had been blacked out, creating an unbroken twilight. The only illumination came from the occasional white candles, affixed in conch shells the size of footballs: these floated like bubbles in water a little above Alec’s head, bright as jewels in the dark. If there had once been carpets, these had been removed; the _agelai_ walked behind Arika on floors made soft with glittering black sand.

They bypassed the largest room—Alec caught a glimpse through Izzy’s eyes of another two warlocks moving candles around with magic, checking the mirrors and draping more of the jewelled strands in place—and entered what might have been a small bedroom in another life. Now it was mirrored like the rest of the apartment, and Xia’s body lay naked on a rowan wood table, hands folded over her stomach. Thirteen floating conches bore their candles in a circle around her, the only source of light, but more than enough to see the twisted rictus of horror that was Xia’s face. Her blank eyes stared up at the ceiling as if looking into a maelstrom, with an awful, whited-out terror that struck them all like a mace.

“She has not been washed,” Arika said, breaking the thick, heavy silence. “Her clothes are also available for inspection, should you wish it.” She paused. “The Court would be grateful for your haste, Shadowhunters. Our people mourn their sister.”

“We will work as quickly as possible, Arika _ashipu,”_ Alec assured her. “Might I see her clothes?” He didn’t think he could bear to touch Xia’s poor body.

Isabelle and Jace approached the corpse while Arika brought Alec to another room, where the clothes Xia had died in were laid out on another table. Alec pulled a handful of witchlights from his bag and set them up around the clothes, giving himself enough light to work with, steadying himself with the clinical preparation.

Then he started to work.

Maybe another person could have handled Xia’s clothes dispassionately, with as much emotion as folding laundry. Alec was not that person. While his _agelai_ were gently lifting Xia’s epicanthic eyelids to check the clouding of her eyes and tracing runes of reveal over her body, Alec found his throat growing tight as he carefully examined every inch of Xia’s clothing, as if each piece—shirt, bra, jeans, underwear, socks, the bracelet woven of coloured threads—were a link removed from a choke collar, pulling it tighter and tighter around his neck. These weren’t like the standard-issue clothes and gear every Shadowhunter could claim from the Institutes; they were worn, imbued with personality. A real person had worn them. It was a proof of Xia’s life that Alec could touch, and it drove her death home to him in a way her body had not.

Even though there was no signs of trauma on the clothes. If he hadn’t seen the body, Alec would have assumed that the person who owned these clothes was still alive; none of the fabrics were torn or sliced, as by blades or claws or teeth, and there were no bloodstains anywhere. The _nocht_ Mark revealed no shards of demon scale snagged in the wool of her sweater, no broken claws or bits of fur, no saliva-spatter or drops of venom. There was no singeing, as there would be if a demon with corrosive breath had killed her that way.

From her clothes, it looked as though some demon sorcerer had just willed her to die, but that was impossible; the energy of things, mana, resisted intrusion. That was why healing spells were so difficult, because the patient’s body resisted the foreign magic. A demon couldn’t just spell someone to die; it had to summon fire and burn them to death, or make a blade of air and cut them to pieces. A demon could kill you _with_ magic, but not _by_ magic. If that wasn’t the case, the Nephilim would have become extinct centuries ago.

But that meant there were no clues here. Alec’s heart sank like an anchor, kicking up a cloud of silt. He didn’t have to reach through the bond to know that Jace and Izzy had found nothing either; there were no injuries on the body, not even a paper cut, and the _nocht_ rune showed no signs of poison or internal damage. Every test pointed to her being in perfect health.

 _*So why is she dead?*_ the _agela_ thought as one.

 _*And what are we supposed to do now?*_ Alec whispered helplessly.

The others had no answers for him.

With exacting care and trembling hands, he folded Xia’s clothes and reclaimed his witchlights and stele. It was a few minutes before he could steel himself to return to the other room, back to Jace and Izzy and the body that lay heavy on his conscience.

Even in death and naked on a table, Xia cut a formidable figure. Her warlock mark had been the silver shadowing of fur all over her sleekly muscled body, white and grey and dappled in black rosettes; a snow leopard’s fur. The claws adorning her fingers like pearl jewellery were vicious; Jace had picked up her hand to extend those claws, checking to see whether she’d gotten a swipe at her murderer, and almost cut himself. Even without magic tossed into the mix, Alec wouldn’t have wanted to go up against her unarmed.

But someone had killed her. Killed her without leaving the smallest mark.

They had nothing to offer Arika, when she returned to check on them. The admission dragged out of Alec’s throat like a fish hook, clawing, bleeding; he kept his gaze on the floor.

The Australian warlock didn’t blink. “We found nothing either,” she said. It was her only response.

“She was afraid,” Isabelle said quietly, looking at Xia’s horrified face. “Whatever she saw, she was afraid.”

“The Court came to the same conclusion.” After a pause, Arika added, “Although that would not be like her. Xia was a very great warrior, an _onna-bugeisha_ in her first life, and one of our strongest mages. That was why she was named prime-guardian of Elias.”

The Shadowhunters nodded. Jace asked, “Her first life?”

Arika’s looked at him. “Her first eighty years,” she said finally. “One mortal lifetime. Her first, in feudal Japan, I believe.”

“Xia isn’t a Japanese name,” Alec said quietly.

“No,” Arika said. “But it is the one she chose.”

*

Xia’s body had been found in the New York Botanical Gardens; Arika explained that Elias was a budding healer and had been the driving force behind the visit. She escorted them from Magnus’ building to the Gardens, which were up in the Bronx. But they learned nothing from the trip; Alec, Jace and Isabelle didn’t know the _telesme_ a team of inquisitors would use to pull the events of the murder out of the ground and replay it as a ghostly mirage, and there were no physical clues to find.

Arika thanked them for their effort in a cool voice, giving no hint as to whether she was disappointed or validated by their failure. It didn’t matter; she didn’t need to say a word. Alec knew them all, felt them like glass shards under his skin, slicing him to pieces: _useless. Worthless. Failure._ The frustration, the unbelievable _helplessness_ —he could do nothing, _they_ could do nothing, there was no way to alleviate their failure, no way to pay back a tiny fraction of what they owed for letting this happen in the first place. The hatred, the self-loathing—it lashed like Izzy’s whip, bit deep as poison, ratcheting from one to the other of them; Jace and Isabelle tried to contain it, to catch it and smother it, but Alec couldn’t stop. It was like a grenade in his chest exploding over and over, shrapnel flying, tearing; _what use are you, what good are you, the one thing you’re meant for and you can’t even do that!_

No wonder Magnus wouldn’t show his face—why would he, why _should_ he, he deserved so much better than this—

And the very worst part—it burned like ice-white fire in Alec’s chest, curled up inside his throat like a razor-edged scream he could only barely swallow—the very worst part was, it didn’t have to be this way. If his parents had taken Magnus’ warning seriously and called in real inquisitors, they could find out what had happened to Xia in minutes. They would know who or what had taken Elias, would have a real shot at finding his body for his family. By the Angel, Elias might not even be dead yet—the warlocks all seemed to think so, but no one had found a body yet.

He _could_ be alive—and Alec and his _agelai_ couldn’t do a Fallen-damned thing about it, because they weren’t good enough.

 _*We_ are _good,*_ Izzy protested, her own frustration and anger a shoal of piranhas in her mind. _*But we’re Shadowhunters, not inquisitors. Of_ course _we don’t know the crime scene_ telesme _, because we never need them!*_ If Shadowhunters were dealing with a body, it was dead just minutes past and they were already on the trail of the monster that had left it. They might take a few seconds to identify what exactly had killed a person, so they could be prepared to go up against it—but that was all.

 _*Then what use are Shadowhunters!*_ Alec shouted. _*_ Shadowhunters _couldn’t keep Xia from being killed, and_ Shadowhunters _can’t find Elias, so what_ fucking _use are we?*_

His _agelai_ ’s shockburst like rotten fruit—Alec using Light Worlder curses?—but Alec couldn’t make himself care. “Arika _ashipu,”_ he said as the warlock turned away from them. “Could you please—could you please tell Magnus that I’d like to attend the funeral? If there is one. If it’s allowed.”

Arika looked back at him. Even after an afternoon together, Alec was no closer to deciphering the thoughts behind those eyes, but he wondered suddenly if she saw his. “I will tell him,” she said. Just that. And turned, and walked away.

***

“Poor Magnus,” Clary said, when Simon told her what Jace had said on his last check-in call: that the Shadowhunters had found nothing, no clues to follow, no hint as to what had killed Xia.

“Poor Elias, more like.” Simon swiped his travel pass on the turnstile and descended into the subway. The school day had seemed to drag on forever, but the last bell had set them free a few minutes ago and Simon was eager to get to Eric’s. Millennium Lint had one last run-through before the show tonight, and he was itching to get a mic in his hand. He wanted to drown out the last few days with music, scream the verses until he couldn’t hear his own thoughts. “Jace said—he said the inquisitors, they use special _telesme_ to replay the crime, right? They pull the memory of the murder or theft or whatever out of the ground or walls, and it plays like a hologram. But the memory of Xia’s death—they degrade really quickly, so even if they sent a team of inquisitors from Alicante tomorrow, they probably won’t be able to see what happened. Which means no one knows where Elias is.”

Clary frowned. “I thought he was dead too?”

Simon spread his hands helplessly. His stomach twisted just thinking about some poor warlock kid in Valentine’s claws. _Maybe he’s not. Maybe he ran from whatever killed Xia and kept running._

 _Or maybe he’s dead, and we just haven’t found a body yet. That might be better than being a Downworlder in Valentine’s grasp._ “His body hasn’t turned up. Jace said Alec’s still hoping he’ll be okay.”

Jace had been calling to apologise—instead of picking Simon and Clary up from school, the new-formed _agela_ were hunting for any trace of Elias or whoever might have taken him. Considering that Simon was perfectly capable of getting himself to and from St Xavier’s, he was hardly upset to have lost his escort.

The only thing he needed to be afraid of was in his own head. And that was something Jace couldn’t protect him from.

Which reminded him. “I’m going to ask Alec if I can stay at his place,” he told Clary as they squeezed into a subway car with a pack of other students.

Clary’s gaze was a double-edged sword. “Why?”

“Because it makes sense.” Simon avoided her eyes. “If I go darkside again—”

 _“Panic attack,”_ Clary said sharply. “Kore’s sake, Si, you didn’t go _darkside_ , you had a panic attack.”

 _Yesterday, maybe. What about all the other times?_ “It doesn’t matter what you call it,” Simon said tiredly. “Either way, I’m not safe to be around when it happens. Jace and the others—they’re more likely to be able to handle me.” Unless he took hold of their runes and did something terrible…

He shivered at the thought—and not with horror. _It would be so easy…_ To do—what?

Anything he wanted.

As quickly as it had come, the speculative interest drained away, and Simon had to swallow hard to keep from being sick all over someone’s pretentious shoes.

_Get it out of me, get this fucking thing OUT OF ME—_

“Really?” Clary asked. “Because it sounds to me like they don’t understand PTSD at all.” She fixed him with a glare, which he barely noticed; he was too busy fighting to appear normal, sane. _Unpossessed._ “What did you tell me Jace said? It’s something that happens to Shadowhunters who ‘weren’t trained properly’? I don’t even know where to begin with how fucked up that is. Like it’s your fault for being traumatised!”

Simon had wondered about that too. It was even creepier when you remembered that Shadowhunter training started in childhood. What was the ‘proper’ way to prepare little kids to face off against demons, and how badly did it violate the UDHR? “I’m not trying to argue that they’re not all brainwashed by their totalitarian government, okay? I’m just saying that if I have another _episode_ —” Clary raised her eyebrows, but didn’t interrupt. “—then Jace and the others are less likely to get hurt.”

You knew there was something wrong with your life when that was actually a reassuring statement.

“I’d think their Marks make them a lot more vulnerable than I am,” Clary argued, because of course he’d told her what had happened this morning, he tried to tell her everything.

“I haven’t tried to _kill_ them,” Simon hissed under his breath. They were both speaking quietly, because they were surrounded by other subway riders and any conversation involving the Nephilim tended to get weird quickly (whereas two teenagers talking about, oh, werewolves and faeries were just debating the merits of the newest Stephenie Meyer knock-off).

“No, you just went all Kankurō on your boyfriend,” Clary said tartly. “They can’t ‘handle’ you, Si, they can’t even _move_ if you don’t feel like letting them!”

 _Don’t remind me._ “I’ll learn to control it,” Simon said, feeling sick. His powers, the twisted hungers that came with them—they felt like a noose around his neck. Like something that might destroy him—his self as he knew it, as he _wanted_ it. “And then I won’t do it anymore.”

_I hope._

Clary was silent for a minute. “It’s an awful power,” she said finally. “But don’t be a martyr about it, okay? I agree with you, it’s—seriously, seriously screwed up, and you should try not to use it. But I don’t trust Shadowhunters as far as I can throw them.” She cut him off before he could interrupt. “Yeah, fine, Jace and the others are great. I trust _them_. But Valentine? Or Alec and Izzy’s parents? The thousands of other Nephilim we don’t know? If any of _them_ try to hurt you, I expect you to use everything you have to keep yourself safe, and no idiotic _‘death is better than saving myself through evil means!’_ crap. Okay?”

Simon stared at her. “Are you that worried about the Inquisitor?” he asked, deliberately side-stepping any more talk of his powers. “Jace said—”

“I _know_ what Jace said—hey, this is us.”

Outside, away from the crush of people, Clary repeated, “I know what Jace said. That the Inquisitor wants to know what happened with Valentine, and that’s it. But they’re scared of this Inquisitor person, Simon. And I don’t think the Nephilim are very good at adapting to new things. _You’re_ a new thing, you’re completely brand new, and your mom—you don’t have your mom to look out for you. I’m worried about what the Inquisitor will think of you. What if she wants to send you to this Academy Jace keeps mentioning?”

_Then I’ll walk her under a train._

Simon stumbled, swearing, his blood gone to ice at the cool, perfectly _logical_ sounding thought. What the fuck was wrong with him?

“I just won’t go,” Simon said, shaken. _I won’t kill her. I’m not going to kill anybody!_ “They wouldn’t want me anyway.” He forced himself to smile at Clary. “Can you imagine me at some Shadowhunter military academy? I’d be their worst nightmare! Always asking questions, no respect for the Law…”

“Seducing all the repressed pretty boys in the showers…”

Simon smirked at her. “Well. I’d have to ask Jace for an open relationship first. I’m not into—”

 _Cheating_.

His playfulness fled, and guilty nausea settled in the pit of his stomach.

 _It really wasn’t cheating,_ he told himself weakly. _We weren’t together then, it doesn’t count…_

He had to tell Jace. _Tonight_. He’d tell him tonight, after the show. And Jace wouldn’t care, because it didn’t count, but Simon could stop feeling like a criminal whenever Jace touched him…

Jesus, his life was fucked up. How had this _happened?_ A few months ago his biggest worry had been his secret crush on Clary. Now he was rationally considering _killing people_ and keeping secrets from his incestuous boyfriend.

_And the worst part is, you can’t figure out which is worse, can you?_

Simon resisted the urge to slap himself.

“Not into what?”

“Nothing.” Simon lifted his bag higher up on his shoulder. _God, I wish it was nothing_. “Let’s just get home.”

Mrs Lewis wasn’t yet home from her day job, so they had the house to themselves. Simon changed out of his uniform and sliced peppers for a snack while Clary found normal clothes of her own. The conversation was unresolved but over; Clary muttered under her breath as Simon packed up most of his things, but didn’t protest again.

It was for the best. As fucking terrifying as his new powers were, Simon had a lot more faith in the Shadowhunters’ ability to defend themselves than he had in Clary. If push came to shove, Alec or Isabelle, at least, wouldn’t hesitate to put him down—but nothing on Earth would convince Clary to pull the trigger in the same situation. So until Simon trusted himself around her again, he wasn’t going to stay here.

“Why are you using a butter knife to cut peppers?” Clary asked, raising her eyebrows as she came back to the kitchen.

 _Because I don’t want to hold something sharp in my hand while I’m thinking about murdering the Inquisitor._ “Couldn’t find the other knives. You want some?”

They took the pepper slices to go and decamped to Eric’s, where he and Kirk were already waiting to go over that night’s set list.

“No, no freaking way, I am singing _First Time_ tonight if it fucking kills me,” Simon said, scribbling over the scrawl that was Kirk’s last-minute edits to the list. “You’ve been talking me out of it for _weeks_ , I am _not_ letting you do it again!”

“Clary, Clarissa, darling, talk some sense into him, would you?” Eric begged. “It’s sappy, bubbly _pop_ , for crying out loud—I can taste bubble-gum when we play the damn thing!”

“I’m staying out of it,” Clary said, her hands up in surrender.

“And you see this face? This is a face that does not care,” Simon said cheerfully, ignoring the way Kirk’s gaze flicked to the scar on Simon’s cheek. He hid the scars on his wrists under unadorned leather cuffs whenever he wore a short-sleeved tee, but short of make-up there wasn’t much he could do about the one on his face. He’d let his friends draw their own conclusions about his injuries and the sudden radio silence from Luke; whenever he started to feel guilty about it, he remembered Luke driving him to the gay conversion centre, and didn’t feel bad about slinging mud at the guy.

Eric opened his mouth to continue arguing, but Kirk cut him off. “Don’t bother, man. He only grins like that when the boyfriend’s coming to the show; you’ll never convince him to cut the love song.”

Simon flushed, and Clary cackled where she was bent over her homework.

“Oh my God, does _everybody_ know?” Simon demanded of the ceiling.

“If you wanted to keep it a secret, you shouldn’t sneak out of practice to make-out with your boy-toy,” Kirk said wryly, and Clary laughed so hard she nearly fell off her chair. “What, you thought we wouldn’t notice? We’re not _blind.”_

“We were just waiting for you to say something,” Eric shrugged. “Figured, you know, not our business. Unlike this set list!”

And just like that, they were back to bickering about the songs.

*

Tonight Millennium Lint was headed back to Pandemonium, and Simon couldn’t deny a frission of excited nervousness at going back to where this had all started. But the coveted 10 o’ clock Friday-night spot was quite a few hours away, and they had a lot to do before set-up time.

Clary and Matt did their geometry homework together while Simon and Eric argued companionably about the set list and Kirk ostensibly moderated. In the end, Simon did get his _First Time_ song, but only in exchange for swapping out _Don’t Dance_ for the still-new _Shatter Me_.

“Are you sure we’re ready to play that for an audience?” Matt asked from the table.

“I think we can pull it off,” Kirk said thoughtfully. “’s not really a club song, though.”

“They’ll love it,” Eric grinned. “You know they will. So what if it’s not expected—since when did we want to put ourselves in a box, anyway? No boxes for Lint!”

“That could have been phrased better,” Kirk said to no one in particular, and wandered away to make sure the violin settings on his custom-built keyboard were calibrated properly. He had a patent pending for that thing, which he’d built himself when he was twelve and frustrated with the time it took to learn to play multiple instruments. Now when he flicked a switch, he could hit the keys of an electric piano and make the sound of any one of a dozen other instruments—violin, flute, harp, trumpet, and a bunch of others. Simon loved it almost as much as Kirk did; it meant he could write music for more than his and Matt’s guitars and Eric’s drums. But he thought Kirk probably wasn’t in for the long haul when it came to Lint; head-hunters from MIT had been sniffing around Kirk since he was eight and rebuilt his school’s computer network for fun.

Clary insisted they all do their homework, which helped settle the pre-performance nerves to acceptable levels. Simon kept checking his phone for messages from Jace until Kirk confiscated it, but anyway there were none. Jace had warned him that he might _not_ make the show, what with looking for Elias, and Simon felt guilty selfishness claw in his chest for wanting Jace to be there instead of on patrol. _First Time_ was _their_ song, written just for Jace, and he couldn’t help it; he wanted Jace to be at Pandemonium to hear it instead of out looking for corpses.

Not enough to insist, though. Not enough to play the aggrieved boyfriend card and plead for Jace to come. That would be a seriously dick move, the kind of manipulative Simon had once accused Jace of being, and with a kid missing Simon was two kinds of asshole for even thinking about it

The song ought to make Jace laugh, though, and Jace hadn’t been laughing much recently.

When the last equation had been written out and checked over by Clary, they ran through the songs—not all of them, but the newer ones they were still a touch unsure about, including a _Shatter Me_ that skipped the final high notes, to save Simon’s voice for later. It really was a good song, one of the best Simon had ever written, but when he’d shown it to the others he hadn’t been expecting to play it at a club. He’d written it imagining the day Lint was hired not to get people dancing and buying drinks, but just to _play_ , just because their music was awesome and the world knew it. It was a stupid fantasy—they were so many miles away from being a household name they weren’t even in the same galaxy, and who said any of them would still even _want_ that in a year? Two? Three?

But at the same time—at the same time, it was hard not to fantasise. Simon knew he wasn’t the only one thinking it, the only one wondering if maybe they were really on their way to going somewhere. Pandemonium had _asked_ them to come back—asked for them, instead of them having to go begging for places to play. People were starting to pay attention to the weird little high school band with the strange name. Clary had even set up a Facebook page for the band, where she posted stupid videos of them practising and snippets of their new songs. The last time Simon had checked it, they’d even had a few fans.

They were good. They knew they were good. At this point, it was mostly down to luck and stubbornness. Performing over the summer had been easy, but it would get harder now they had school to juggle. And did they have what it took to still be here in a year, or two, or three?

Only time would tell. In the meantime, they practised their music.

The rest of the night was a blur. They loaded the instruments into the van, played video games, ordered the traditional pre-show pizza, and let Clary doll them up. Simon was getting used to the kohl around his eyes and the hug of his Shadowhunter jacket, the tight shirt that Clary insisted on—this one emblazoned with _God bless this hot mess_ , in hot pink on black.

He was _not_ prepared for the hair chalk.

“Are you planning on playing hopscotch on my head?” Simon asked warily as Clary approached him with what looked like a box of chalk. “What’re those for?”

“They’re for _you_ , you moron. Here, _sit.”_ She pushed him onto a stool in front of the bathroom mirror. “Don’t you trust me?”

“With my life, sure,” Simon said. “My hot bod? Not so much.”

She grinned at him in the mirror. “These are hair chalks. See? You use them to streak colour in your hair. I thought it would help, you know.” She made jazz hands. “Give you some _oomph.”_

“What,” Simon said flatly. “What are you even, I have plenty of oomph. I am the oomphiest son of a mother you know. Also, you are not dying my hair. That is a thing which is not going to happen.”

Clary rolled her eyes. “It’s not dye, Simon. This stuff is really temporary; you’ll be back to normal by Monday, I swear.”

Ignoring any further protests, she proceeded to streak a bright, hot pink through his hair, making a Rogue-like stripe. At first, it was barely noticeable, but after a few passes the colour began to stick. In just a few minutes, it was highlighter-bright.

“Now we brush it, to get any loose pigment out,” Clary announced. She did just that, pulling a soft, small hairbrush from her make-up bag and gently tugging it through his hair. “What do you think?”

Simon frowned at his reflection, wincing occasionally when Clary’s brush found a tangle. But the stripe looked good, he decided finally. He probably wouldn’t have dared choose pink for himself, but it worked. With the make-up Clary had already applied, it made him look wild and fey, like something wicked and playful. Even his glasses couldn’t ruin the effect.

He looked like _Jace_ , Simon realised with a jolt. Like a bad-boy, a punk Peter Pan, sexy and a little scary. Between the bright pink in his hair, the dark eyeliner, and whatever Clary had done to his cheekbones, he was giving the finger to America’s cookie-cutter gender roles—he almost looked androgynous.

Something in him shivered, electric and awake. For an instant, his eyes sheened ink-black, deepest blue studded with tiny stars—

And then he blinked, and was himself again.

“I love it,” he said softly. He cleared his throat, tried again. “Good call.”

Clary was smug. “All my calls are good calls, you should know this by now.”

“I am but a poor male, and must humbly apologise for my ignorance,” Simon replied. “But at least I’m smart enough to keep you around to remind me.”

He ducked her playful swipe.

*

Jace texted as they were leaving for Pandemonium: _found nothing, see you at Pand. Love you._

That literally never got old. Simon was still resisting the urge to squee like a fangirl whose OTP had just become canon when they pulled up behind the club.

Inside, Pandemonium was—well, pandemonium. Young adults of all descriptions were out to party their Friday night away, awash in a dark sea of pink-blue-green lights. Simon saw mohawks and mullets, tattoos and Jimmy Choos, piercings and princess crowns, and felt the sparking atmosphere sink into his blood, paint a bright grin across his face. It was almost like slipping into battle-trance, but louder, more exhilarating; he felt like laughing, like plunging into the crowd just to drink them all in, the energy pulsing out of the dancers in waves of brilliant, scintillating light. The music caught his heart in a net of bass and he felt awash with flames, flickering and flaring, pure energy; ready to dissolve into golden brightness at any moment.

Nervous? Why in the Time Lords’ names would he be _nervous?_ This was so good, so real, sweat and sex and love-of-life carving a new animal out of the night; and he was a part of it. Why would he be nervous? How could he be, readying himself for the sacrament the crowd had come to partake of? There was a contract here, wordless and binding, a promise; his music for their love, his soul offered up for their delight.

Simple. Easy.

Simon had no instruments to set up, so while the others got their gear ready he and Clary went to look for Jace. Simon didn’t really expect to find him in this crush, but damn it he wanted so badly to _move_. He wished suddenly, abruptly, that there was another band playing tonight, that he and Jace could just dance together. Simon was a terrible dancer, shy and awkward on the dance floor, but Jace—Simon was sure Jace would be an incredible dancer. The way he moved… That body would slide as easily into dance as into killing, Simon was certain.

There were plenty of pretty blonds out tonight, but none pretty enough to be his _aikane_. Making a note to repeat that line to Jace, he waited while Clary grabbed a coke.

“He’ll show,” Clary shouted over the music, and Simon nodded, serene. His fingers tapped along to the beat on the bar, feeling it hum around his bones. On his other side a girl stretched out her hand to get the bar-tender’s attention, a skein of what looked like friendship bracelets woven around her wrists, all crimson and blue and gold.

Not long now.

And then it was time, now, countdown counted down and his name in calligraphic blood on the contract with a slash and a swirl and a hot-eyed purr into the mic—

 

_“I have a heart that gets on everybody’s nerves,_

_They don’t want the truth, they just want the wo~rds,_

_Blah blah blah blah, and I can sing until I’m dead,_

_And none of you’ll remember a single thing I said!”_

 

They wove fire. They were _sorcerers_ , charming hearts like sirens and calling down lightning in blue and pink and green to dazzle and blind, leading the crowd through a labyrinth of their own design from which there was no escaping—and they didn’t want to escape, this audience, Simon could feel it humming through the room and he drank it in and sang it back to them, taking-transmuting-howling it back to them: their excitement, their thrill, their sheer _want_ bonefire-bright in his head his mouth on his lips like a kiss.

_Worship me, worship us and we will give you Elysium—_

His vision flickered black as he bent over the mic, snarling through a mouthful of night—

 

_“Took our dreams and got in line!_

_Held our breath and hoped to die—_

_Fade on~_

_And all along, we got it wrong!_

_Live a slow and painful life,_

_Put our heart on hold inside—_

_Fade on~_

_And all along, we got it wrong!_

_Oh we keep it hush hush hush!_

_Have you had enough, have you, have you had enough?_

_Took our dreams and got in line,_

_Held our breath and hoped to die—_

_Fade on~_

_And all along, we got it wrong!”_

 

Black waves lapping against crimson sands, the sound of surf breaking beneath the words and Simon was howling, a storm of crystalline winds giving breath to his song, songs, he hardly needed the mic at all to pour his voice into every crevasse of every heart, snare them all, and it was so _easy_ , so right it was almost painful in its perfection.

When they wrapped up the song, he could almost hear the rustle of wings beneath the applause.

“Don’t clap us off just yet, kith and kindred—we’re not done with you yet!” he grinned, loving it, half-drunk on it. At Matt’s signal they launched into _Earthquake_ , always a crowd-pleaser, and Simon revelled in the chance to stalk across the stage, owning it, feline and dangerous. He channelled every bit of this wild energy into the song, every word streaking starfire through the dark club, dancing like meteors before his eyes, inside his skull. Fierce and fiery, exulting in the power, the delight, the priceless joy of singing his heart out and feeling a crowd of strangers love him for it, demand more in an insatiable-unbreakable circle of give-and-take, their euphoria feeding on him and his music growing incandescent on their approval, their adoration.

For the length of a song, he was a king, a god, a seraphim singing heaven down—

When he dropped to his knees for the final howl, the crowd’s screams almost drowned out his own, and he was laughing, drugged on it, when he finally saw Jace in the crowd.

With an idiotic grin, he raised his hand and waved as he got back to his feet. “Someone very special just arrived, my dears,” he told the audience, panting a little, laughing a little. “If I can catch my breath, I’ve a special song just for them. But the rest of you,” he added mock-grandly, “can listen too.”

Still grinning, he touched his fingers to his lips and held them out to Jace, stepping back with the mic—

And saw, standing just beyond his lover, a face familiar as a first kiss—

Simon froze. It was only an instant, a second painted azure-blue in the sweep of the strobe lights, but he knew that face, even here, even washed in blue light—the black hair he’d tangled his fingers in so desperately, the sweet-sharp lips the first he’d ever kissed, the cheekbones sharp enough to cut your wrists on—and though he couldn’t see them from here, the eyes so dark a green they were almost black—

Simon blinked. He blinked, the lights flashed, Jace was shaking his head with a fond smile and that other boy was gone like smoke, gone like a song…

 _Of course he’s gone, because he was never there,_ Simon thought, shaken. _Pull it together. He said he lived in Europe; what would Sebastian be doing in a Brooklyn club?_ Never mind that this wasn’t the first time Simon had thought he’d seen him since those nights at Comic Con…

 _Yeah, well, if hallucinations are all you have to deal with you can count yourself lucky_ , Simon told himself, and shook it off. He had a song to sing.

He caught Kirk’s signal, nodded, and let the music sweep him under.

 _“I’ve got these mem-or-ies, they’re all of you-and-me,”_ he sang, the moment of weirdness rapidly fading under the thrill of the so-familiar lyrics,

 

_“I’ve been recording them ever, since I was seventeen,_

_Push play-back then re-wind—_

_I see us meeting for the very first time…_

_A mental note of you, you sang my melody,_

_First bar in a life-long sym-pho-ny,_

_The prelude to a kiss…_

_My heart’s pounding when I reminisce,”_

 

Chirpy, sweet, electronica bubbles shimmering sweet rainbows, and Simon was grinning, laughing at himself, pride discarded on the floor in favour of singing to Jace.

 

_“The first time that I saw your face—_

_The first time that you spoke my name…_

_The first time that I heard you say_

_‘There’s a first time with me every day.’ ”_

 

 _Do you remember,_ aikane? _Do you?_ _The Institute’s music room, how close we came to never being close at all—the kisses, the touching, the sounds I made, the promise you made me?_

_‘There’s a first time with me every day’—_

He did. Simon could see it, saw it, a bright speechlessness writ raw on Jace’s face, and Simon was grinning so hard it hurt, the mic cupped in his hands like a gem and his pink-streaked hair brushing his eyes, and so what, so what if he was a sap, what did it matter when he meant it, meant every burnished word—

 _“No matter what I do,”_ he swore, meaning it, meaning it all,

 

_“I won’t fast forward anything with you._

_I know you feel it too—_

_The first time I saw love I was with you.”_

 

There were a lot of ways for a love song to go wrong, and Simon knew this wasn’t an especially good one. It was nothing special, except that it was, and maybe that was what carried it through, what made the crowd cheer and put their hands in the air—the truth of it shining out of Simon’s face, dripping dazzlingly from his tongue, lips, cheerful bubbles blown by lyrical breath. Maybe if he hadn’t meant it they wouldn’t have let him sing it, but he did and they did and Eric and Matt and Kirk played it with him, this simple little song that he meant so much.

That meant so much, from the look on Jace’s face.

And that made it all worth it.

*

There were more songs, almost a dozen of them. Simon took some of them a little easier than he maybe should have done, but they’d played _Earthquake_ too early and he had to save his voice for _Shatter Me_.

The last song of the night.

When it finally came, Simon was soaked in sweat, his shirt plastered to his chest, but he didn’t feel tired. Nitro-glycerine rushed through his veins, alight and burning, drumming his heart like Eric’s bass and gods, it was good. It was so, so good, the rush, the dizzying, electrifying power of it all, and _Shatter Me_ —Simon knew it was the best song he’d ever written. Knew it, and felt it trembling within him, a phoenix new-born in his rib-cage and eager to spread its wings.

Eric and Matt faded out as the magic unspooled from Kirk’s fingers, from the keys under them, and Simon waited, breathed—

And let the phoenix-song out.

 

_“I pirouette in the dark…_

_I see the stars through a mirror…_

_Tired mechanical heart,_

_Beats ’til the song disappears.”_

 

The heavenly strains of a violin spun out from Kirk’s keyboard, sweeter and richer than guitar or drum; they caressed over Simon’s skin, rose up into the sky with his golden birdsong—

_“Somebody shine a light,_

_I’m frozen by the fear in me,_

_Somebody make me feel alive_

_And shatter me!_

_So cut me from the line,_

_Dizzy, spinning endlessly—_

_Somebody make me feel alive_

_And sha~tter me!”_

Kirk hammered down and Simon was there to meet him, greet him, weave his voice in amongst the notes and oh, this one meant something too, dark and real and raw; the dreams, the darkness, the visions and the runesongs, the fierce roaring in his head and the black wings behind his eyes—it was so much _power_ , this thing inside him, a sun inside his skin and sometimes, sometimes he just wanted to break—break open, break wide, let all the fire come spilling out to scorch the earth. He sang that desire out into the dark, the glass-struck longing, the impossibility, the need, the defiance, rejection and acceptance and contradiction. Kirk’s violin soared and dived, spiralling around Simon as Simon spiralled, singing a song that was a scream into the abyss.

 

_“If I break the glass then I’ll have to fly—_

_There’s no one to catch me if I take a dive,_

_I’m scared of change and the days stay the same,_

_The world is spinning but only in gray—_

_“If I break the glass then I’ll have to fly—_

_There’s no one to catch me if I take a dive,_

_I’m scared of change and the days stay the same,_

_The world is spinning but only in gray!”_

 

He heard the black waves lapping against a red shore, saw the world stutter and strobe around him, black-white-black kissed by blue-green-pink, and at his back, on his shoulders a weight of feathers that were also swords, butterflies, dragon-scale—

 

_“Dizzy, spinning endlessly—_

_Somebody make me feel alive_

_And shatter me!”_

 

The note—he held it and held it, carrying it up and out, a phoenix bursting into conflagration, a star going supernova, on and on and on until the air shook with it, burned with it, until the room was full of stars and—

And everything was crashing—surf, breaking surf, yes, surf and glass as throughout Pandemonium the lights and windows exploded, raining a rainbow of glass that would fall upon the crowd in another moment; the speakers were mute and people were screaming, Simon could see the shards falling, falling in that last flare of light—

Saw them stop, arrested in mid-air, swallows paused mid-flight, meteors mid-streak, raindrops turned to ice and frozen—

Motion drew his eyes; as the glass froze a girl’s hand was flung up in the middle of the crowd, up towards the ceiling; he saw sand-gold skin and glimpsed the bracelets on her wrist, gold and garnet and cobalt—

And then she was gone, lost in the panicked crush and the dark, but when Simon heard the crystalline smash of glass against the floor, it came much later than it should have done.

A hand grabbed his sleeve; he heard Matt’s voice calling him, pulling him away from the front of the stage. Glass crunched beneath his feet like sugar, and Simon’s mind was spinning, spinning.

_Did I do this? Was this me?_

“For fuck’s sake, Si, come on!”

***

Clary was not one of the ones who screamed when the lights overhead burst like fireworks, but only because the sound of shattering glass ripped the breath from her lungs. She ducked down instinctively, panting desperately for air, and then without the lights to hold it back darkness swept over her like an ocean, swept over them all—

_The werewolves, the werewolves were coming in through the windows—_

She couldn’t hear herself think; people were screaming, shrieking, trying to run—pressing in on her, hands and shoulders hammering against her, oh Hekate she was only a _mouse_ they would crush her to _pulp_ —

She panted, the taste of Raphael’s blood thick and overwhelming in her mouth, not coppery like human blood but sweet like apples with the tang of silver—it was choking her, flooding her throat, pouring into her lungs—

There were too many people, the crowd was too panicked and Clary couldn’t make herself move, a human flinch waiting for a horse-sized wolf to claw her down, a vampire to tear her throat out; someone’s shoulder slammed into her chest and she fell, unable to make herself cry out, unable to catch a breath—

She was going to be trampled under the crowd’s feet—

An arm caught hers before she hit the ground. She shrieked reflexively at the sudden contact, blind and terrified, but whoever it was righted her on her feet; their hand slid down to clasp hers, and she latched onto it instinctively, squeezing tight. It was calloused and warm, strong; in the middle of this nightmare, it felt like a safe harbour.

Then it pulled, firmly. Her head ringing, Clary let herself be led, stumbling along in the dark, clinging to the stranger’s hand. It was a lighthouse, showing her the safe path through the rocks, the waves; Clary could feel the memories of the Dumort slowly fading away, the screaming in her head growing quiet and still.

She did not fall again.

Outside, the streetlamps closest to the club had gone dark, but those across the street cast light like amber honey over the sidewalk and the confused, clumsy crowd. Clary blinked rapidly as her eyes adjusted, but glittering after-images were still dancing across her vision when she felt the hand in hers slip away.

She turned after it. “Hey, wait!” she blurted, startled, wanting to say thank you, wanting to know who had helped her. She caught a glimpse of a young man’s black hair, and sharp, diamond-edged cheekbones, but she was already frozen, her breath turned to frost in her lungs again.

Because the hand that clasped hers in the dark had been Marked with a _voyance_ rune.

***

“Clary!” Simon shouted, finally spotting her. “Jace, guys, she’s over here!”

She turned around to face him, looking dazed, and he swept her into a hug. “Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re okay!” He pulled away suddenly to look her over. “You _are_ okay, right?”

“Yeah… Yes, I’m fine.” He saw her swallow. “Somebody—somebody helped me get out.” She looked beyond him at their approaching friends. “Simon, I think he was a Shadowhunter.”

 _“What?”_ He opened his mouth to bombard her with questions, but then Eric, Matt and Kirk were there, all exclaiming to find Clary alive and unharmed, and these didn’t seem like the best circumstances to introduce them to the Shadow World. He stepped away to give his friends room, his mind awhirl.

A golden ghost, Jace appeared beside him silently. “Is she all right?” He had made it backstage even before Lint had, fire-eyed and frantic to make sure Simon was unharmed; Simon had no idea how he’d made it through the crowd so quickly. Maybe that was something they taught you, in Shadowhunter training; Simon wouldn’t know yet.

“Yeah, she’s not hurt or anything. Just freaked out, I think.” He scanned the crowd, but anyone who wanted to disappear would have an easy time of it in this chaos. “She—Jace, she said that a _Shadowhunter_ got her out of there.”

“It wasn’t me,” Jace said. He sounded…guilty. “If I’d thought, I would have gone to help her. But—”

“But you were worried about me,” Simon finished, not sure how to feel about that. Clary had been the one in more danger, and he wished Jace had gone to take care of her instead. But he couldn’t think of a good way to say that, couldn’t figure out how to phrase it so that it wouldn’t sound cruel and criticising. “And the others definitely didn’t come?”

Jace shook his head. “They’re on patrol.” He looked out over the crowd. “As I should be.”

Simon nodded, understanding. He was fine, Clary was fine, there was no good reason for Jace to stay. Jace, Alec and Izzy, and maybe their parents, were the only Shadowhunters available to patrol the entire city; that had to come first.

 _Except they’re not the only ones…_ “What about this new Shadowhunter?” he asked.

Jace frowned. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It could be someone from the Inquisitor’s team, come to read the earth before she gets here… That would be my best guess.”

“ ‘Read the earth’?”

Jace gestured with his hand, searching for an explanation. “Like tracking. Feeling out the woods before the hunters go in.”

“Because that’s not ominous at all.” Simon sighed. “Okay, fine. Worst case scenario, it’s still not a bad thing to have an extra Shadowhunter around, probably.” Whoever it was had helped Clary, so they couldn’t be _that_ bad. One of Valentine’s goons wouldn’t have helped some nobody mundane. “Wait, before you—there was a girl in there. When the glass was falling, she—she stopped it. I think she made it fall more slowly.”

Jace was nodding before he’d finished speaking. “I saw that, but not who had done it.” He touched Simon’s shoulder. “Try not to worry, _aikane_. Pandemonium’s always been a Shadow World hotspot—what did you think I was doing there, the night we met?” He smiled, briefly. “It was probably a faerie or warlock, looking to limit the night’s injuries. We should count ourselves lucky she intervened.”

They _had_ been lucky. Cop cars and ambulances were pulling up now, their sirens burning the night blue and white, but looking around Simon didn’t see many people bleeding or otherwise obviously injured. People could have died under that hail of glass; whoever that girl was had probably saved a lot of lives.

 _She fixed my mistake,_ Simon thought. Or at least mitigated it. Neither he nor Jace had brought it up, but they both knew it had to have been Simon who blew the lights and windows. He’d done it before, hadn’t he, at Magnus’ place? Even if he didn’t remember it.

Simon sighed. “Go on, get going.” He kissed Jace quickly, softly. “Go kick some demon ass.”

Jace’s eyes sparkled. “I always do. Tell Clary I’m glad she’s okay,” he added.

Simon nodded. “I’ll see you when you get in.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” Jace said softly—and was gone.

***

Outside the club, the night was alight with the harsh blue and white lights of emergency services, police officers and ambulances side-by-side in the neon-lit dark. A crowd had gathered, as crowds always did, exchanging and embroidering the stories being spun out of the last few minutes. There would be a whole slew of tales come dawn,each taller than the next.

Across the street and five stories up, a woman crouched on a rooftop. Her dark skin and darker clothes blended into the night; only the gold of the Egyptian axe on her back might have given away her position, if any had looked for it. She was tall and strong, a warrior in her prime, perhaps thirty-five years old.

Beside her was a young man almost two decades her junior, his Portuguese face lit by the slowly revolving object hovering above his cupped hands. Thirteen interlocked bands of gold, silver, and crystal were each turning and rotating around a glowing central point, a small diamond marble the size of a robin’s egg. Steel rings adorned the first and middle fingers of the boy’s hands; they sparked and shimmered in the light of his charm.

“It’s here,” he said softly. “It’s absolutely, definitely down there.”

His captain nodded. “Did you get that, Ana?”

 _“Affirmative.”_ The young woman’s Haitian voice came through their earpieces as clearly as if she’d been kneeling beside them. _“But I can do you one better; it’s the singer. Those werewolves we talked to were telling the truth: Symeon Morgenstern is the_ anunnaku _.”_

A rushing, fluttering sound, like a flock of birds ascending into the sky, sounded overhead; the charm-bearer looked up with warmth in his eyes as a blue-green-black whirlwind of feathers resolved into a young Native American man, stepping lightly down out of the air onto the rooftop, his long black hair falling behind him like a stripe of the dark sky.

“You heard?” the captain asked him.

He nodded.

 _“You should be able to see it,”_ Ana continued. _“White male, brown hair with a pink streak. Black jacket. It’s standing near the entrance.”_

“We see it,” the captain said. “It’s beguiled itself the beginnings of a nice little cult, hasn’t it? Civilians and Shadowhunters both.” Her gaze remained fixed on the monster down below. “All right, Ana, good work. Lucio, Chi, I want you two to track it. Don’t let it out of your sight, but _do not engage._ Understood?”

The young Native man—Lucio—nodded again. Over the comms, an Asian woman said, _“Copy that. Going under now.”_

The charm-bearer made a sharp gesture, and the light in the diamond bead snuffed out, the spinning rings collapsing neatly into a circular pendant and falling as gravity reclaimed it. He caught it deftly before it hit the ground and looped its chain over his neck, springing to his feet like a puppy and bounding over to Lucio before he could leave.

“Waaaait wait wait wait.” He held out his little finger and a bright smile. “Good luck.”

A softly fond smile flickered, there and gone, across the other boy’s face, but he reached out and hooked the proffered pinkie with his. “Thank you, Cas.”

Unhooking their fingers, he turned and ran for the edge of the roof. With a snap as of unfolding wings, he spread his arms and a blur of blue and green and black enfolded him, reshaping him; human boots leapt off the edge and avian wings beat down in the next instant, huge, powerful wings of lapis and jade and jagged onyx.

The remaining two watched him disappear into the dark sky.

“Ana, head back to base,” the woman said finally. “I’ll want your report.”

_“Affirmative. Heading back now.”_

“The Shadowhunters are going to make this complicated, aren’t they?” Cas asked quietly, when his captain still had not moved.

She sighed. “I’m sure they’ll try, but in the end it makes no difference.” Finally ending her surveillance of the street below, she rose to her feet. “If Symeon Morgenstern is the _anunnaku_ , then Symeon Morgenstern is the one we kill.”

* * *

 

NOTES

 

 _Palaestrae_ were wrestling schools in ancient Greece, usually attached to gymnasiums.

Iaoth is an angel who thwarts demons. (As do most of the other angels, one assumes?)

All the runes listed in the seraph blade are ones I’ve made up, except _enkeli_ , which is a canon Mark. They’re all runes used specifically in crafting anti-demon weapons.

Niobe is a figure in Greek mythology; for the crime of hubris (translated as arrogance, but really it means believing yourself to be the equal of the gods) her children were killed by Artemis and Apollo, and she was turned into stone.

A cantata is a piece of music written for both chorus and orchestra; it is usually religious or spiritual in nature.

A ricercar is a complex polyphonic composition from the Boroque and Renaissance periods.

As I’ve mentioned before, I went through the list and gave ‘proper’ names to many of the runes mentioned but not named in canon. So _santalana_ is the equilibrium rune, _azo_ is for stamina, _desviar_ is the block/deflect rune, _enia_ is the insight rune, _tharros_ is courage-in-combat, _libratum_ is the sure-footed rune, _silencieux_ is for soundless steps, _celeritas_ is heightened speed, _suplete_ is the flexibility rune, and _fasthet_ is my name for the fortitude Mark. _Pari_ is the true name of the parabatai Mark.

 _Harpagmos_ is an ancient Greek rite or ceremony (I believe Cretan, but I might be misremembering) where an older man ritualistically kidnapped a younger man with whom he wanted to become lovers. The two would spend two months in the wilderness and at the end of it, the younger man would accept or reject the elder as a lover. Among the Nephilim, the _harpagmos_ is part of the preparation before forming a _parastathentes_ bond, which is like the _parabatai_ bond but for lovers instead of friends.

 _Pommes de sang_ is French for ‘apples of blood’. In the Anita Blake universe the term refers to people who willingly provide blood for a vampire; in Runed, a _pomme de sang_ is a lot more like property.

Pankhaia is an island in Greek mythology, supposedly in the Indian sea. According to legend, it is populated by a ‘lost’ Greek tribe, led there from Crete by Zeus gods know when. It’s considered an Eastern Atlantis. In Runed, it’s one of the ‘hidden lands’, like Idris—places mundanes can’t see or enter.

Selkies are a kind of fae shapeshifter, human-looking creatures who can become seals by wearing a sealskin. They don’t skin real seals; the skins are their own, a part of them.

Anjanas are really lovely Spanish faeries. They’re the good faeries of Cantabrian mythology, who look after people and especially children; every four years the Anjanas bring children presents on the night of January 5th. They can talk to water, help people lost in their forests, and leave gifts on the doorsteps of good people. I love them to pieces!

Xanas are faeries or spirits from Asturian mythology, usually associated with water and always female.

The Yōsei is a Japanese faerie that sometimes appears as a bird.

A fan axe is an object from ancient Egypt, literally a polearm weapon with a fan-shaped head. Modern scholars aren’t sure it ever existed, since no archaeologist has ever found one, and if it _did_ exist it probably wasn’t actually used as a weapon.

 _Skiá-aird_ is a term of my own invention, and means shadow-knowing or shadow-cognizance. It’s the name of the sixth sense Shadowhunters have for recognizing and identifying Downworlders. Present tense verb is _skiáir_ , past tense is _skiárd_.  ‘I see you’, ‘I saw you’; ‘I _skiáir_ you’, ‘I _skiárd_ you.’

Inanna is the Queen of Heaven in Sumerian mythology. In one of the myths, she descends to Irkalla, the Underworld, through seven gates, where she dies and is resurrected (with the help of some friends) before coming back through the gates again.

Arika’s name apparently means ‘blue water lily’ in one of the Aboriginal Australian dialects. Since water lilies are supposed to be a gift from the Rainbow Serpent, and Arika is marked with rainbow scales, it made sense to be that her human mother might have called her a gift from the Rainbow Serpent.

Her surname, Kijarr, means ‘pain’ in the Iwaidja language.

 _Viisaille viisauden_ is Finnish for ‘to the wise, wisdom’. _Viisailta maailmalle_ means ‘from the wise, to the world’.

The _nocht_ Mark is my own invention; it reveals things which are hidden. Only physical things like secret doors and hidden safes, mind, or hairs on a shirt; not philosophical secrets or lies.

An _onna-bugeisha_ was a kind of female warrior in feudal Japan, a member of the nobility. They get called female samurai a lot, which isn’t true—samurai were strictly male-only—although they often fought _alongside_ samurai to defend their homes or answer the call to war. They’re absolutely fascinating and I urge anyone interested to go look them up!

UDHR is the acronym for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Kankurō is a character from _Naruto_ who, among other things, uses magic to control human-sized-and-up puppets.

Olor is Latin for swan.

The songs in this chapter are; Nerves – Icon for Hire; First Time – Family Force Five; and Shatter Me – Lindsay Stirling & Lzzy Hale.


	7. The Truths That Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, new chapter! Far shorter than the previous one, but I promise the next will be much, much longer.
> 
> I was determined to get you guys a new chapter this weekend, because tomorrow I'm going into surgery - I have an ovarian cyst that may, possibly, be cancerous. We'll know one way or the other after the surgery. I'll be recovering for a while, so there's likely to be a bit of a wait for the next chapter. Sorry! But I promise it'll be a good one.
> 
> I also want to say thank you to everyone who's been leaving reviews - I've been even worse than usual at replying, because this cyst has left me really, really sick. But I read and appreciate every one of them. Thank you so much for enjoying my stories, you guys - I love all of you _so much_ <3
> 
> This chapter is mostly sexing and relationship talk, with a nice dose of angst in the middle. However, please bear in mind that **my faeries are not human, and do not have human biology.** Olianthe does not have the genitalia of a human cis-woman; please bear that in mind, and feel free to skip over the sex scene if it might bother you.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

The crash of crystal on steel rang like the bells of Hell through the Seelie Court’s training hall, loud and arrhythmic. Some of the Court had gathered to watch, spider-silk dresses whispering to themselves as their wearers murmured to each other behind fans of glass and gold. The bells on their fingers chimed as they stroked exotic animals on velvet leashes—funnel-web spiders the size of kittens, fennec foxes in amber-studded collars, hummingbirds with gilded beaks, and other impossible pets.

Clary hit the ground and rolled as some of their audience laughed. The sound of it was like ringing glass and Clary ignored it, ignored the bruises, swept up to her feet with her sword a streak of silver in her hand and fell into a ready stance, braced for the next blow.

Olianthe smirked. “Good. Again!”

She lunged for Clary, and—

Clary dived aside at the last possible moment, heart in her throat, and didn’t grab Olianthe’s braid as it whipped past—she’d learnt the hard way that Seelie braided razors into their hair when they readied for battle. Instead she drove Buffy under Olianthe’s arm, aiming for her side, ducking away as Olianthe’s twin obsidian blades caught and deflected the blow with inhuman ease—darted back in and kicked out at Olianthe’s ankle—

Olianthe leapt over the kick, hart-like, her elbow cracking into Clary’s breastbone as she came back down and Clary let herself fall, defusing the force of the hit into a roll, and Olianthe was fast, so fast, a shooting star in her diamond armour—but Buffy was faster still. The fae-forged blade melted and re-formed in four nanoseconds and the unicorn crossguard became the butt of a gun, its sweeping wings the trigger guard and hammer, the trigger curling around Clary’s finger like a wedding ring and Clary was up on her knees as Olianthe came in swinging and Clary—

Fired, and—

The _crunch_ of the bullets French-kissing Olianthe’s armour ripped through the room like an earthquake.

Silence broke like a mirror. For a beat of a mortal heart, their audience seemed not to breathe.

Then Olianthe laughed. The razors in her hair glinted like silver fish in sun-struck water as she tossed her braid back, sheathing her swords in one elegant motion. Her armour was already pushing out the mangled bullets to drop _tink-tink_ on the floor as she bent to give Clary a hand up.

“An excellent bout,” she said, lifting Clary to her feet. If she was put out to have lost, she gave no sign of it, and the gathered courtiers resumed their low-voiced chatter as she beamed down at Clary. “And an excellent trick! Had you used steel bullets, you might have killed me.”

She sounded unaccountably cheerful about this, but Clary was starting to get used to her princess’ odd ways. Namely, how much it delighted her when Clary proved herself capable, fierce, strong. Someone who didn’t need protecting.

“And that would be why I didn’t!” Clary said. “Killing you would really put a crimp in date night.”

“This is true,” Olianthe agreed solemnly, but her peacock-sheened eyes glittered with laughter. “I would not be able to escort you to _Guardian of the Moon_ from beyond the grave.”

“And that would be sad.” Clary willed Buffy back into its default form—from handgun back to shortsword—and sheathed it inside its magnifying glass disguise. “I still can’t believe you’ve never eaten popcorn. What’s the good of immortality without popcorn?”

“We could ask a philosopher,” Olianthe suggested as the two of them walked from the sparring hall towards Olianthe’s apartments. “But I think them all entranced by some star shower this night.”

“It can probably wait,” Clary said, the easy, lazy banter doing as much as the practice session to smooth the knotted tension from her shoulders. “I don’t think it’s all that urgent, honestly.”

“Perhaps not.” The door to Olianthe’s rooms—white, rippling stone like a waterfall of milk made solid, decorated with an intricate design of stars and bluebells in a spray of pearl and sapphire—opened at the princess’ touch, and as always Olianthe stepped aside and gestured for Clary to enter first.

This was far from the first time Clary had seen Olianthe’s home—not the knowe, which was what Olianthe called her mother’s underground palace (and which was not, Clary understood vaguely, really underground at all, but a small world connected to but separate from the world Clary knew) but the suite of rooms that were all Olianthe’s own—and yet it never stopped taking her breath away. Once upon a time Olianthe’s _galon_ —a word that meant something like ‘heart’ and something like ‘sacred space’—might have been a large cave, carved out of the same milk-white stone as her door, but now it was several rooms, and while the outer walls were still stone the dividing walls were of roses—roses red as blood and white as snow, pink as dawn and blue as a sigh, their stems woven into elegant arches that joined room to room. There were no real windows, but picture windows of stained glass shone like jewels in the stone walls, backlit by caged fireflies, forming murals like gems: a herd of unicorns galloping beneath a sky of midnight blue, three gold-and-crimson dragons flying in a circle on a green ground, a white sword half-emerged from a silver cauldron. Thick, velvet-soft moss carpeted the stone floor, and the furniture seemed to grow out of it, trees guided by magic into the shapes of chairs and tables, a desk, a wardrobe, all graceful curving lines like splashing water, or the beating of wings. In a corner, a tiny dragon the size of a Chihuahua lay curled in a nest of brass necklaces and silver bracelets.

“Hey, Étaín!” Clary bent to tickle the dragonet’s head, smiling as the little creature purred and pushed into her fingers, wisps of smoke coming from its nostrils. “Lovely little dragon. Did you miss me, sweetie? I missed you. But look what I’ve got for you!”

From the pocket of her jacket, she proffered a single earring, a small golden hoop with a tiny heart charm dangling from it. Étaín chirruped her interest, her slender neck straightening to inspect the treasure, amber eyes widening. She was all over a creamy orange, dappled with white stripes and dots, and from her back spread a pair of wings like a monarch butterfly’s, not scaled and leathery but like toughened silk, shimmering all the colours of the rainbow and edged with more white spots. The frills tracing down her spine from head to tail were just as brightly coloured, the twin antennae sprouting from her delicate, finely-formed head iridescent. Her eyes were a little too big for her face, making her the absolute epitome of cute.

Now her wings fluttered with excitement, and she chirruped again, a questioning little trill that made Clary grin.

“Yep, all for you!”

Étaín’s wings stilled, and the little dragon tentatively wiggled closer. Then, when the human didn’t object, she carefully, delicately took the earring from between Clary’s fingers and retreated with it, purring like a kitten as she curled up around her new treasure, her small hoard shifting and clinking as she settled with it.

“You spoil her,” Olianthe said, but Clary could hear her smile.

“She deserves spoiling.” Clary straightened up and stretched. “Anyway, it’s not a big deal. I found it down the back of the sofa. No clue where its pair is. I think they were a gift from one of my mom’s friends; I definitely never wore ’em.”

Olianthe nodded. She was unbraiding her hair, setting each of the small, deadly razors knotted in it in a silver bowl as she found them. Clary had seen her do this a dozen times, and never once did the faerie cut herself. “Will you bathe before you go?”

“If you don’t mind,” Clary said. “But there’s no rush tonight.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice as she added, “There’s no Simon to wake, now.”

“That will make your lessons easier,” Olianthe said lightly. _Clink. Clink._ Two more razors in the bowl. “But you are not happy about this.”

Clary shook her head. “He’s gone to stay with the Shadowhunters. He thinks it’s too dangerous for him to live with me right now.”

“Is he wrong?” _Clink._

“I don’t know,” Clary admitted. “He keeps having flashbacks, losing control of his powers, but I don’t think he’s any less likely to hurt Jace than he is me.”

“Perhaps he doubts your ability to defend yourself,” Olianthe said. “Why not tell him about our lessons?”

There was a question. Why _not_ tell Simon that she’d been training with Olianthe almost as long as he had with Jace? That every night, when she ostensibly went to the bathroom, she was really having her faerie girlfriend teleport her across the city for magical self-defence classes? That for every minute she was in the bathroom, two or three hours passed in the knowe, plenty of time for Olianthe to teach her how to use the sword she’d given Clary?

_Because this is mine,_ Clary thought. _Because this little bit of magic is something I don’t want to share. Not yet._ It was a difficult, unnerving realisation to face; not the least bit logical. But there it was. These nightly trips to faerieland were _hers_ , something beautiful and magical that she didn’t have to share with anyone. Sparring with Olianthe, learning how powerful her body really was, glimpsing the princess’ Seelie secrets—these things were thrills, wonders, things to treasure.

Was it so wrong that she didn’t feel ready to tell other people about them yet?

“I’m training with him and Jace too,” Clary said finally. “If it was really about my being able to defend myself, that would be enough. But it isn’t. And… I like that this is just ours. It’s this beautiful secret I can carry around with me all day.” She looked at Olianthe. “I don’t want to lose that feeling yet.”

Olianthe dipped her head, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

_And he should trust me without knowing about these sessions,_ Clary thought. _He should trust himself._ It was a stupid, immature thing to be upset about, him moving out, but wishing never unbruised a heart. “I’m going to wash up,” she said, annoyed with Simon, annoyed with herself.

Before she reached the doorway, Olianthe was abruptly behind her. Clary felt and heard the soft displacement of the air, but the princess didn’t touch her to get her attention. She never did, never laid a finger on Clary without permission, and Clary didn’t know if it was a faerie thing or an Olianthe thing, but she liked it.

Now, without touching her, Olianthe said, “You are not helpless, Clary.”

The simple statement cut through the messy tangle of emotion like a sword through a Gordian Knot, catching in Clary’s throat as it struck truth like a blade meeting stone. Because there, of course, it was, the real reason for the unsettled, deformed misery she’d been so eager to sweat out on the sparring floor; her own helplessness in Pandemonium tonight, her pathetic _weakness_. Her enraged frustration with the flashbacks and nightmares that only Olianthe knew about, because Simon had enough crap to deal with without shovelling Clary’s on top of it. He would blame himself and let the guilt crush him if he knew, so he didn’t know—but goddesses, she was so sick of feeling this fear, of being afraid.

And then, to hear— _‘You are not helpless, Clary.’_

Faeries couldn’t lie.

“I need a bath,” Clary said shakily. “I’m gross.”

This time, Olianthe let her go, saying nothing as Clary ducked through the princess’ bedroom—past a bed that hung suspended from the ceiling by ropes of white roses, curtained by wisteria—and into the bathing chamber.

Unlike the rest of Olianthe’s apartment, the bathing chamber was undecorated, austere in its simple grace. The white stone ceiling was lower here than in the other rooms, the walls unpolished, mimicking a natural cave. Bioluminescent mosses and blossoms cast their blue-green light on the deep spring-fed pool that was Olianthe’s bath, meeting that of the glowing crystals scattered along its bottom. The toilet—fully functional, if a bit archaic in appearance—was in another, smaller adjoining chamber, but Clary didn’t need that now.

She stripped without fanfare, leaving her clothes in a heap outside the cavern. The air was warm on her skin as she climbed down the steps into the water, sighing a little as the bliss of the warm water kissed her bruises. Whatever was in it, she never ached from her training sessions after bathing here, her bruises always gone by the time she reached for a towel. Whether that was because of magic or minerals, it slid silk-like up her thighs and hips and waist until she was immersed up to her chest in water clear as glass.

And then, taking a breath, she dived.

_Being stolen out of Simon’s rucksack, cold fingers closing around her fragile mouse-body—_

_Raphael’s blood in her mouth—_

_The werewolves crashing through the windows, a dark tide of fur and fang—_

_Hodge standing over a prone Simon with a chakram in his hand—_

_The burst of red and grey and white as she pulls the trigger, blows a man’s face away—_

_Valentine’s face when he looks at her, indifferent, unimpressed, cold as ice—_

_Wash it all away._

Clary burst out of the water with a gasp, hair plastered to her skin. She imagined every nightmarish memory trapped in one of the beads of water dripping like diamonds from her arms, falling away from her and into the pool. She imagined the magic in the water dissolving them, unmaking them, and willed it true.

She ducked her head under the water again. When she came up for air this time, she took some of the powder from the scallop-shell bowl at the pool’s edge, worked it up into a lather, and started washing her hair.

She _wasn’t_ helpless. Intellectually, she knew that. She’d saved Simon from Hodge, saved _all_ the Shadowhunters from Abbadon—Kore, even as a _mouse_ she’d been the one to find their escape route out of the Dumort! She was freaking amazing, was what she was.

But all the evidence in the world, all the logical thinking, couldn’t undo the memory of the fear. Fear of the vampires. Fear of Abbadon. Fear of Hodge, of Valentine. Fear for Simon.

That was why she trained with Olianthe: so that when she was afraid, she could do something about it. So that she could stand back-to-back with Simon the next time some big bad crawled out of the woodwork. So that she wouldn’t be left behind as a useless _mundane_.

So that the next time she saw Valentine, she wouldn’t miss.

She rinsed her hair. The water remained perfectly clear, and would no matter how much soap she used.

When she rose her head out of the water, Olianthe was standing in the doorway. Her eyes were closed, her fingers resting on the arch, anchoring her without sight. The dark green body-suit that went under her armour revealed every lean, lithe inch of her, more surely than if she’d worn nothing at all, and Clary felt her mouth go dry.

“May I join you?” Olianthe asked—calmly, evenly, and Clary blinked, remembering where they were. Remembering, suddenly, that she was naked.

She paused, considered.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I think you may.”

Olianthe opened her eyes. And stared.

Clary lifted her chin slightly, doing nothing to cover herself. She’d expected to feel nervous, but now that the moment was here there were no nerves to feel. Only a rich, simmering pleasure breaking through her like a dawn at the look on Olianthe’s face.

Everywhere her eyes touched, Clary turned to gold.

Without a word, without looking away, Olianthe slipped free of her clothes, the green silk peeling away like a second skin to lie discarded on the floor, and in the charged air it felt like an offering, like something given up to a goddess. Clary’s stomach tightened even as the rest of her grew soft and warm, taking in the sight Olianthe made without shame. This was the first time she had seen it.

Beneath her clothes, Olianthe was hard and lean, arms and legs sculpted as if stone, the colour of honey and milk. What curves she had were curves of muscle; her breasts were small, the line from waist to hips almost straight, ethereally androgynous in a way that caught Clary’s breath. Faint scars, like silver shadows, dappled the moonstone-lustre of her skin, the marks of claws and teeth and ancient blades, and they only highlighted the fey beauty of her, emphasised the strength and grace inherent in Clary’s warrior princess.

Her hair, unbound, fell around her like mist, like sunlight.

There was nothing Clary could say that would not break this moment, nothing that would not sound trite or cliché in the face of Olianthe’s unselfconscious glory. So instead of speaking, Clary held out her hands, drops of water sparkling on her skin like gems in the dim, unearthly light of the cave.

And Olianthe—hunting cat, warrior, princess of the Seelie—joined her. She walked to the edge of the pool as if approaching something holy, descended the steps with her impossible eyes fixed on Clary. The ripples as she entered the water brushed Clary’s body like the caress of lips, her hair pooling around her like molten topaz. Clary did not flinch, or quail, or shiver as Olianthe took her hands, strong fingers curling securely around Clary’s wrists, calluses brushing Clary’s damp skin.

_“Dall_ _şe Dôn,”_ Olianthe said finally, hoarsely, _“le haghaidh mé ar d’iníon.”_ Her pupils were narrow slashes of black as she gazed at Clary, sharp ebony points against shimmering sapphire, emerald, yellow diamond. The eyes of a creature older than any human, and she stared at Clary as if, as if…

“And what does that mean?” Clary asked softly.

Olianthe brought Clary’s hands to her lips, turning them over to kiss Clary’s knuckles. Slow, and light, and Clary felt each touch reverberate in her bones. “ ‘Blind me, Goddess,’” the princess murmured, “ ‘for I look upon your daughter.’”

Oh. _Oh_.

“Sweet-talker,” Clary whispered. Her pulse beat hard beneath Olianthe’s lips. Gently, she pulled her hands from Olianthe’s and raised them to the faerie’s face, pausing before she touched skin. “May I?”

In answer, Olianthe pushed her cheek against Clary’s fingertips. And when Clary curled her hands around her head and pulled her down, Olianthe came willing.

It was a kiss, not a spell. There was no fire, no fireworks; the earth did not shake. But the sound Olianthe made against her mouth seared emerald fire down Clary’s spine, and the faerie’s lips were soft, so soft, calla lilies stroking her, winding her tight. Heat ached between her thighs, gold wire and gold sparks knotting around each other in time with her heartbeat and Clary tangled her fingers in that river of hair demandingly, pulling Olianthe closer, shiver-hungry for more. The water rippled and shifted around them, waves born from their desire dancing out to the edges of the pool as Olianthe stepped closer, curving into her, their bodies meeting skin-to-skin for the first time, careful and electric; Olianthe’s body smooth and hard against hers, hairless where Clary had curls, her hand falling to Clary’s waist and the other to her back, stroking up her spine, stroking her closer—and Clary went, lips parting, stroking her tongue into Olianthe’s mouth and tasting honey and cinnamon, the warmth of the water and Olianthe’s body melting into her skin, catching in her breasts, her stomach, her hands, the sweet, aching pressure between her legs…

Olianthe was still stroking her, faerie fingers tracing the curve of her spine over and over, learning the arc of her waist, her hip, her outer thigh, and Clary broke away from Olianthe’s lips to kiss her jaw instead, tracing it up to the princess’ pointed ear. She wanted to touch, and did, let her hands explore the sweep of Olianthe’s collarbone, the swells of her breasts; Olianthe made a sound like a growl when her thumb brushed a nipple, and without thinking Clary did it again, pinching it gently, nuzzling Olianthe’s throat and dragging her teeth across silky-smooth skin—

With a low hoarse sound, Olianthe scooped her up, lifting Clary from the back of her thighs and carrying them both into deeper water, the warm buoyancy lifting her as surely as Olianthe’s hands and Clary gasped, wrapping her legs around Olianthe’s waist and _wanting_ , sharply, terribly; she caught Olianthe’s mouth and kissed her hard, pressing forward with her hips, clutching at Olianthe’s shoulder and back and aching so badly, so sweetly, to be touched all over, for hands on her breasts, to have something inside her—

“Clary—” Olianthe gasped between kisses, rough and hungry and wonder-struck, and no one who could make a faerie princess sound that way was helpless, Clary was so full of power she might spontaneously combust, pool of water or no pool of water, _“álainn, réalta croí, anwylaf—”_

This was as far as they’d ever come before—albeit the first time without their clothes—but this time Clary didn’t want to stop, mesmerised by the water-aided slide of skin on skin, lost in the lush taste of Olianthe’s mouth. The jut of her shoulder blades under Clary’s hands, the way her calluses dragged over Clary’s skin—she wanted to feel them inside her, stroking against her softness, filling her up and up, gods it would feel so fucking _good_ —

She bit her lip—bit Olianthe’s lip—licked the sting and rocked her hips hard, wanting pressure, wanting something pushed against and into the ache driving her crazy—

Fuck it.

“I want—” Damn it, how did you say this, how did these words leave your lips, she could fucking taste them but they felt so weird to _say_ —and that was ridiculous, why should it be embarrassing, she, just, “’Lianthe, I want…”

Olianthe licked her lower lip, and Clary shivered, praying that she wasn’t blushing. “Tell me,” Olianthe murmured, the words kissed into Clary’s mouth. Honey-sweet, they burned like smoke.

“I want you to make me come,” Clary said, rejecting her own shyness, the part of her that balked at making the unladylike demand. _Whatever a lady does is ladylike and damn it, this lady wants to fuck her datemate!_ “I want you to get me off. I want your fingers inside me, ’Lianthe, can that _possibly_ be arranged?”

The faerie girl hissed, snake-like, and her pupils were obsidian needles as she looked at Clary with such a surge of helpless-hungry-fervent- _want_.

“My lady’s wish,” she said hoarsely, “is mine own.”

They kissed again—Clary kissed her faerie princess because the look on her face was too much, too intense, too terribly beautiful to accept—and Clary felt herself moved through the water, felt Olianthe carrying her back into the shallows. She never set a foot wrong, never slipped or stumbled, and Clary knew a deep, visceral thrill at Olianthe’s strength, her grace, the sensation of muscles pulling taut against Clary’s body in interesting ways—

Olianthe carried her out of the pool, the water streaming off them, wet hair sticking to skin in an unattractive mess but who _cared_ , and the kiss came apart like two halves of a locket as Olianthe went to her knees to lay Clary down on a pile of thick, soft towels that definitely hadn’t been there a minute ago, and Clary didn’t care about that either. She just pulled Olianthe down for another kiss and ran her hands all over the faerie’s incredible, beautiful body, raking with her nails, biting, sucking, thumbing Olianthe’s nipples until she moaned into Clary’s mouth.

And Olianthe—Clary had her legs wrapped around Olianthe’s hips, insistent, impatient, and Olianthe’s caresses were only making it worse, making it better, stroking down her sides and thighs again and again, touching her like she was a treasure, something sacred. She left Clary’s lips and kissed her way down Clary’s chest, gently unlocking Clary’s legs from around her; her mouth closed around Clary’s nipple and Clary nearly choked, gasping, her hands flying to Olianthe’s hair to hold her there, because oh gods that should be weird but it wasn’t, it was so _good_ , a white-hot line directly to her clit and Olianthe’s fingers were right there, sword-calluses stroking feather-light over Clary’s thigh, brushing the curls of her mons and that was shivery too, shivery-good, so gentle—

“For ’raidia’s sake, go _on!”_ Clary ordered, a little more desperate than she’d meant to be but gods damn it if Olianthe didn’t _hurry up_ —

But Olianthe laughed, low and soft. “I do not know how,” she said without shame, and oh, of course she didn’t—she’d never had a human lover before, she’d told Clary that the night she gave her the magnifying glass. Clary had to show her, and something like embarrassment threatened but Clary refused it; there was no reason to be embarrassed, to be shy. Olianthe was not lessened by her ignorance, and Clary wanted that same bravery for herself, that alien innocence that made her think of Lilith in the Garden—not naïveté but animalism, pure and prideless as fire, glorying and unashamed. So she took it, grasped it, embraced it; she breathed a laugh of her own and curled her hand around ’Lianthe’s, “Like this,” drawing her fingers to Clary’s clit, guiding them into stroking her. “Gently at first. Don’t break me.”

Olianthe dropped her mouth to Clary’s ear. “I will not,” she breathed, and Clary felt it shiver through her like stardust on her skin.

_Faeries can’t lie._

And, oh, it was better and worse than doing it herself, stranger and more searing, so that Clary felt every caress echoed deep inside her. Olianthe didn’t know Clary’s body but she learned quickly, her thumb and fingers exploring as if she could taste Clary through her fingertips, those fingertips with their satiny calluses working Clary in firm, silken circles just the way she liked. Clary bit her lip until Olianthe’s tongue flicked over her teeth, and then she moaned, taking herself aback with the sound but unable to take it back, the soft little noise just spilling out of her and ’Lianthe _purred_ in answer, purred like a cat, a deep rumble in her throat that made Clary squirm in a good way, the best way. She could feel herself, wet and growing wetter, aching to be breached and thrust into and filled, the steady-slow- _thorough_ motion of Olianthe’s fingers spiralling pleasure tighter and tighter, screwing the ache deeper between her legs.

She still had her hand on ’Lianthe’s and she traced her fingers over ’Lianthe’s, pushing the faerie’s middle finger down towards her vaia. Olianthe bestowed kisses like jewels on Clary’s cheeks and jaw and lips, and went willingly, eagerly even; Clary felt the faerie’s whole body shudder when she found Clary slick and soft, heard ’Lianthe make a hoarse, surprised sound.

_“Dôn,”_ she whispered, like a prayer. _Goddess_.

It made Clary throb beneath her fingers.

Olianthe drew back to look at her, and Clary forgot to be uncomfortable, forgot to be awkward with Olianthe’s peacock gaze stroking over her body like hands, like silken feathers. Keeping her thumb on Clary’s clit, the princess gently nudged Clary’s thigh, a request without words, and Clary spread her legs wider without thinking about it, without needing to, letting Olianthe look at her.

“So different,” Olianthe murmured. She stroked a fingertip between Clary’s labia, exploring, flicking her attention from Clary’s sex to her face and back again, watching her reactions. “How am I to please you best?”

“Here.” Clary raised her hips a little, drew Olianthe’s hand to her vaia again. “Just one finger at first. Gently—”

She drew Olianthe in, and felt her pleasure twist and flare as ’Lianthe groaned, shocked and amazed by the wet velvet heat of Clary’s body. That made it Clary’s turn to purr, pleased and almost smug, and her free hand slid into ’Lianthe’s hair, pulled her half on top of Clary again, gold hair spilling around them like a curtain and the narrow slashes of those elven pupils almost invisible, almost gone as Olianthe slid deeper into her, fell into Clary as though she were drowning. They kissed, clumsy with it, and Clary moaned a little against her mouth, amazed by how good it felt, ’Lianthe’s calluses skimming against her inner walls like satin against silk, thrilling and unfamiliar and stunning, searing. It was hot and close and intimate, not her own hand or a toy but another person entirely, this beautiful faerie princess clasped inside her and hanging on her every word, “good, now move, just in and out, _yes_ , like that—” And oh gods, the look in those eyes, Clary had to clench hers shut and breathe as Olianthe thrust in and out of her so sweetly, gradually going faster as Clary urged her to, Clary doing nothing so elegant and controlled as rocking her hips but _squirming_ against her, restless, breathless, stunned by the raw real immediacy of it, this princess who thought Clary was strong, was brave, touching her, inside her—

She raised her hips, panting and cursing and not caring, not caring because Olianthe gave her what she wanted, pushed a second finger into her alongside the first and yes, fuck yes, Clary’s toes curled at the long, sweet thrusts, the ache of want, the stretch of it—not much, her toy at home was bigger, thicker, but when she peeked through her eyelashes Olianthe was still watching her, dropped down to kiss her when she saw Clary looking, her tongue stroking into Clary’s mouth like her fingers into Clary’s sex and Clary trembled, dug her nails into Olianthe’s back and rocked into her, chasing it, the ache the stretch the friction, feeling herself fraying apart on Olianthe’s fingers and loving it, amazed by it, hungry for it—she could feel her orgasm building, her inner sky lightening with the prelude of the sun’s dawning, and when Olianthe curled her fingers Clary nearly shouted, made some other nameless sound instead, almost keening. Their kisses became clumsier, just brushes of lips on lips and panting breath and finally Clary pushed Olianthe’s thumb away, got her own fingers on her clit and did it right, hard, frantic, Olianthe’s fingers strong and sure and long inside her, in and out of her, and her face, her eyes—

Clary shattered, a hundred thousand pieces exploding away from each other. She came silently, only gasping a little, feeling Olianthe’s fingers suddenly thicker and harder as she tightened down on them, the fullness heightening every drop of bliss, pushing it further, making it sharper. Supernovas, and her body shuddering, her insides contracting over and over around Olianthe, sweetly, terribly.

When she came back to reality, Olianthe was whispering what sounded like poetry in her ear, in a language the stars might have spoken before humans learned to make fire, and Clary kissed her and kissed her and kissed her.

“Show me how to do that to you,” she ordered, when she could breathe, and Olianthe grinned at her as they swapped positions.

Clary had known since that first moment of seeing Olianthe naked that the faerie princess had different parts between her legs; that was fine, that didn’t matter. It only meant that Olianthe had to show her, guide her, a little more than if they had had the same plumbing—and even then Clary wouldn’t have known how she liked to be touched, how hard, how fast. This wasn’t so different. Olianthe’s biology was alien, but not unbeautiful; Clary caught her breath a little as the silken seam between ’Lianthe’s thighs opened under her fingers, all soft petals and fronds pale and lustrous as pearls. It was more like watching a kadupul blossom than anything mammalian, starry and so soft around its inner whorls, an artist’s rendition of what genitalia should be. It made Clary shy of her own, glad her orgasm had come first; in the back of her mind she wondered if Olianthe had arranged that deliberately, if she had known or guessed that beside faerie perfection humanity could only be imperfect.

Olianthe’s eyes, multi-hued fire watching her, did not seem to consider Clary imperfect.

The flames there warmed Clary, heated her blood to simmering, brushed aside her petty insecurities as meaningless, worthless. She turned her finger gently, like a key in a lock, coaxing the pale silky petals of her datemate’s body open for her, stroking the star-burst calyxes with another fingertip. When it made Olianthe shudder she did it again, watching ’Lianthe’s gaze glaze, fascination and a sense of heady power setting sparks to tinder; Clary laid her whole hand gently against ’Lianthe’s splayed sex, fingers outspread—and knew she’d guessed right when the slender fronds wrapped instantly and firmly around her fingers and hand, when Olianthe made a sound that was almost a cry and fell back against the towels, eyes closed and lips parted, stunned.

“You’re made to fit together, aren’t you?” Clary asked, her voice gone low and rich. Another faerie’s parts would lock together with Olianthe’s, lace like clasped hands, but evidently an actual hand worked near as well; she hardly needed Olianthe’s shaky nod to tell her so. “You’re beautiful,” Clary said, meaning it. Meaning it _so much_.

Olianthe’s parts throbbed against her hand, the little bead-like nodes at their tips velvety where they wrapped around her. They flexed, tightening and loosening, tightening and loosening again, and Clary thought of her own body clasping her toy at home as she came.

She bent her head and teased her tongue between her fingers, and grinned against Olianthe when she made that sound again, that delirious-desperate noise that made Clary’s insides clench tight and warm. It was even better when ’Lianthe reached tentatively for her, and Clary moved her head into the faerie’s hand, let herself be held. ’Lianthe’s fingers twisted in her hair, never tightly enough to hurt but _tight_ enough; it was thrillingly delicious to be clutched tight or pulled closer when a curl of her tongue shook her faerie princess to her core. When she squeezed with her hand—gently, carefully—Olianthe squeezed back, and moaned, and slick gathered under the heel of Clary’s palm. Sucking the little tendrils—the thickest were maybe half the width of her little finger—into her mouth didn’t do much, but nipping lightly at them did, made Olianthe convulse and keen and _open_ , another, inner seam unlocking under Clary’s hand.

“Is this okay?” Clary murmured, gently touching a fingertip to the newly-revealed hole. “Should I leave this alone? What do you want me to do, ’Lianthe?”

“It is okay.” Olianthe’s voice was nearly a whisper, hoarse and hungry. “It is very okay. Clary…”

Olianthe showed her what she wanted, and Clary was only too happy to oblige, turning her hand so her fingers were still laced with the tendrils but her thumb was down, could push into ’Lianthe slow and sweet and careful and make the princess moan. Clary was hard-pressed not to copy her, biting her lip to be quiet: ’Lianthe was soft inside, not like a human vaia but lined with what felt like hundreds of silky filaments, wet and warm and stroking Clary _back_. If someone had described it to her beforehand it would have sounded creepy, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t at _all_ ; strange, yes, but it was _Olianthe_ , which made it strangely hot instead of not.

Clary moved her thumb in a slow circle, marvelling at the way it made Olianthe shudder and clench tight. Exploring carefully, she found a hard little bud nestled among the silkiness like a pearl buried in an anemone’s velvet-soft fronds; brushing it made Olianthe arch and her outer tendrils lock around Clary’s hands almost painfully, both of them gasping.

“What’s this?” Clary asked, grinning once she had her breath back, and touched it again, lightly, so lightly: it still tore a keen from between Olianthe’s teeth, made her pupils narrow to hair-thinness, barely visible at _all_.

_“Cholpan,”_ ’Lianthe said. “So it is called.” She grinned up at Clary, a fierce, delighted thing. “I have several.”

Clary raised her eyebrows, feeling her grin widen. “Is that so?” She crooked her thumb, and the faerie’s fey expression broke apart into something wild. “Shall we see if I can find them all?”

She did. With a little help. With her thumb, and fingers, and tongue, Clary learned Olianthe’s body and took her apart, piece by piece, tracing the constellation of little gems inside ’Lianthe with her fingertips, lapping at the whorls of her, teasing out her secrets. The nodes were _cholpanei_ , the warm passage _baltu_ , the fronds lining it _irniri_ ; the outer tendrils were _pirae_ , and the second, hidden opening that didn’t open but quivered under Clary’s tongue was ’Lianthe’s _sikkuru_ , where her _arnara_ was hidden away, an organ that didn’t interest them today.

But there would be other times. Plenty of them.

That was as far as the two of them got with the language lesson, because Clary was kissing and licking ’Lianthe’s _sikkuru_ and sliding another finger inside her, and another, swapping out her thumb for a third, nudging and teasing those sweet little bumps, touching three of them at once, working them like Clary would her own clit and Olianthe’s thighs were locked around Clary’s head, the muscles in her legs jumping, trembling, the pool-room filled with the satin-ribbon sound of her cursing-begging in some foreign tongue, her hips rocking against Clary’s face, her hand, her whole body curved like an elven bow as she arched—

She made Clary’s name into an invocation as she came, turned it into something holy, something powerful and blinding and Clary’s other hand was between her own legs, barely needing to touch herself before she followed Olianthe down, two comets streaking from the sky and crashing in fire and gold to earth.

*

Later, when Clary had washed again and the two of them were curled together in Olianthe’s hanging bed, Étaín coiled in a knot by their feet, Clary asked something that had been in the back of her mind since her datemate had stripped naked for her.

“Is it all right to call you a girl?” She was braiding ’Lianthe’s hair for her as it dried; nothing as fancy as the faerie styles she’d seen in the knowe, just a simple plait. “I assumed, and then Izzy called you a princess… But the rest of the People don’t call you that, do they? And I don’t actually know anything about how the Seelie see gender. I’ve just been assuming you’re like humans, but even we aren’t actually binary, so… Are you going to answer me, or are you enjoying seeing how deep a hole I can dig for myself?”

Olianthe laughed, and bent to kiss her, lightly, sweetly. “But you dig so prettily.” She grinned when Clary pretended to swat her. “You must help me, dear one. How is one determined a girl, among humans?”

Without letting go of the plait, Clary shrugged a little helplessly. “You’re a girl if you decide you’re one. Same if you’re a boy, or both, or neither. Some people switch back and forth. But you’re the one who has to decide. Nobody ‘determines’ you except you.”

“Then I will be a girl, for that is what you are, and I would ever be as near to you as I can be.” And she kissed Clary again, softly, and fervently, and this time Clary let the plait slip through her fingers, forgotten.

***

Simon had to admit to feeling distinctly out of place as he approached the building that was the Sariel _agela_ ’s new home. Most of those out at this time of night were too distracted to pay the genderbending quasi-punk much attention, but between the faded jeans and the pink in his hair, Simon didn’t exactly blend in. This was a neighbourhood for the rich and famous, for pop stars and movie producers and cars worth more than Clary’s house, and he couldn’t lose the feeling that everyone was watching him, judging him. He was very aware that he didn’t even have a key to Alec’s apartment as he pushed through the glass doors into the marble-floored lobby.

Jace had assured him via text that an opening rune would do the trick— _the ward builders are coming tomorrow_ , apparently—but Simon was still feeling nervous enough to jump when the concierge waved him over.

_Vampire_ , Simon realised as he walked to the desk, and wondered how he knew. The woman was impeccably dressed in a dark uniform, her blonde hair put up in a perfect chignon, and although her skin had something of the sheen of the marble floor, it wasn’t obvious until you came close. But Simon had known before he’d seen that.

_Shadowhunter._ The thought of that—of being bred to spot non-human beings, bred to _kill_ them—sickened him. They were just like dogs, in the end—hunting dogs, and the Clave held the leash. _And puts them down when they’re no longer useful,_ Simon thought darkly, thinking, briefly, of the punishment Jace faced for being with him.

“Mr Fray?” the concierge asked.

Simon blinked, and shoved all thoughts of the Clave away. “Yes?” His nerves made it a question. It had been a while since anyone but Clary called him Fray.

But the vampire only smiled, and proffered a key. “Mr Lightwood said you were to have this.”

 Oh. “Thanks,” Simon said, relieved. Thank the Time Lords for Alec, the only one of them with any _sense_. Simon took the key, and made sure not to flinch at the concierge’s cold hand. He smiled at her instead. “Have a good night,” he offered.

“You too, sir.” Her fangs, when she smiled, were even whiter than her skin.

_Sir_. That was a new one.

Less than five minutes later he walked into the apartment, pocketing the key carefully—the last thing he wanted to do was lose it. The brownie housekeeping service must have been by, because there was real food in the kitchen, and Simon made himself a sandwich, trying to ignore the heavy weight of the silent, empty rooms. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been alone like this. Couldn’t decide if he liked it or not.

He cleaned up—brownies or no brownies, his mom had raised him to tidy his own messes—and headed upstairs for a quick shower before bed.

It happened when he saw his reflection.

He’d only meant to glance at the mirror in passing, not especially interested in seeing Clary’s makeup wizardry again—but the newly sharp angles in his face caught him, made him pause, and look again without meaning to. The makeup had held up well under Pandemonium’s lights and the sweat, and Simon had the disorientating, vertiginous feeling that the reflection looking back at him wasn’t his own—that the feral androgyny belonged to someone else—someone who wore his, Simon’s, face as a pale mask. And the mask was coming apart.

Simon didn’t remember putting his hands on the sink, but the cold porcelain half-burned his palms; he didn’t remember leaning into the mirror, but his lips were only a breath away from the glass. He didn’t remember the world dropping away, but now he couldn’t find it, couldn’t see anything beyond the eyes looking back at him—the pupils swelling, growing, breaking like a sea to swallow everything and everyone and stars spilled through the blackness, a thousand thousand stars, suns and moons and planets dancing in rings of light and dust and gravity—

_“Dsirgil ita oi maninriiax?”_ the face in the mirror whispered, and Simon was falling, falling into the stars—

_What dream is this?_

—and the stars showed him—

_—magpie-winged Nurma asleep in a hammock, aers wings hanging down to either side, that milk-silver hair spread over aers bare chest, the navel-less belly—_

_—singing with every spark of being, twining around other singers like strands of DNA and the Song is everything, the Song is light and life and love—_

_—a war between stars, between suns, the very matter of reality forged into weapons as the Song becomes a Scream of hate and rage and seraphfire sears whole worlds to ash—_

_—“We’ve seen you watching, Watcher,” Sirath says, vir draconic wings tilted open trustingly, vir tail flicking lightly, playfully against xyr leg—_

_—voices screaming, halls of glass and moonstone full of smoke and blood and corpses and they’re here, why are they here it was supposed to be safe—_

Reality hit like a truck; Simon staggered against the sink, clutching it as tightly as he could though his bones felt like snow inside him, cold and melting away. He was shaking badly, gagging on copper; dark blood dripped from his nose onto the white porcelain, came from his mouth when he spat to clear it. He coughed and coughed and the blood just kept coming up, searing his throat like acid, and Jesus Christ where was it coming from, what inside him was bleeding, breaking? He stared through watering eyes at the sink and the blood splatter was a Rorschach test, twisting and writhing against the white ceramic, demons screaming in a haze of crimson wings and fire, screaming at him—

— _ADOKAZ-AOI, NAZKSAD-ENAIKAT-DË_ —

It ripped through him like a bomb going off, a nuclear warhead detonating inside his skull; Simon dropped, clutching his head as he hit the floor, every cell of his body on fire and shrieking at him, breaking open and white light spilling from the fractures, burning sun-bright against the walls, the whole world shaking as a creature older than universes roared from a throat that had swallowed nebulas:

— _DSIRGIL ITA OI MANINRIIAX?_

Simon shattered, screaming, and everything went blissfully, finally black.

*

When he came to, it was sluggishly, glacially, and he was still on the bathroom floor.

For a while, Simon just lay still, unable to face the thought of moving. His body felt wrung out, hollow and fragile, spun glass spiderwebbed with cracks. If he moved, he would break again, he just knew it.

God. _God_. Was this going to keep happening? This was the second episode in 48 hours, and this time he was alone, with no one else to help him. There was no one to pick him off the floor and carry him to bed this time, to make sure he wasn’t concussed, hadn’t choked on his own blood. The near miss of it—the realisation of how close he’d come to hitting his head just wrong, of drowning in his own blood—chilled him. There’d been nothing but luck to ensure he woke up again.

And twice in two days… Twice in two days meant it wasn’t a one-off. Meant it would probably happen again. That voice, those bear-trap visions, the agony that defied all description—he started to shake, thinking about going through that again, a frantic, maddened dread clawing at his throat like a live thing so that he had to clench his teeth to hold in the scream of _denial-no-please-please-please, I can’t do that again, I can’t, I can’t, please!_

_Is this going to kill me?_ His throat burned, and he closed his eyes to hold the tears in, his chest locking up, tightening. _Is that it? Am I going to keep having these fucking visions until they kill me?_ He saw himself burning up like paper around the angel at his heart, turned to ashes by that seraphfire, and fought back a sob.

It made sense though, didn’t it? How could something mortal contain something that wasn’t? The pain, the blood, the visions that shredded through his mind—how arrogant, to expect that he could survive this, sustain this for any length of time. Wasn’t he already fraying, fragmenting under the pressure? Twisting into something dark, something _wrong_ , something that laughed at murder and grew hungry at the sight of fear—and what had he expected? That a fragile, breakable mortal could hold the soulsearing star of an angel and not break apart around it? What a joke. What a sad, pathetic joke.

He cried, for a little while. Exhausted, burnt inside his mind, his mouth coated in copper; he couldn’t help it. The thought of it just never fucking ending, weeks or months or years of waiting for this to happen again—not able to stop it or control it, able to do nothing but scream as the angel tore him apart over and over, piece by piece—until it _did_ end, finally, when there was nothing left of him to break—it was too much.

And there was no fucking _reason_ for it. Why? Why was it happening, why was the angel doing this, why wouldn’t it _stop_ —

_What do you want from me?_ He thought at it, at the angel; angrily, desperately. Screaming at it. _What do you fucking **want**?_

The silence was deafening.

Eventually, he had to get up. There was no other option; he couldn’t lie on the floor forever, or until Jace came home and found him there. Jace had enough shit to deal with without this too. And what could Jace do, if Simon called him now? Rush home and worry? He couldn’t help, and that, that helplessness, would hurt him so much. No, better for Simon to keep his mouth shut. To wash the blood away himself, and rinse the sink out with soap so Jace wouldn’t smell the copper later. Better to shower, clothes abandoned in a corner and the hot water pummelling down, and remind himself that someone would have told him if those possessed by angels died of it. Jace could not have hidden it from him, could not have kept that knowledge out of his eyes and his touch and his kisses, but Simon had tasted no desperate poison in him these last weeks. Because it wasn’t there.

_But Jace might not know,_ a cruel voice whispered. _And the one who would—Magnus—remember how he looked at you after Abigor, when you came out of the bedroom—the look on his face—_

Simon leaned his forehead against the shower wall, too tired to cry again, and wished the water would drown him.

*

He woke for the second time that night when the front door opened downstairs. Again, it was a slow waking, but this time it was soft and comfortable, drifting towards wakefulness in bits and pieces like scraps of silk and velvet. It took him a long, dreamy moment to remember his episode in the bathroom, and when he did he remembered it like a bad dream, the kind that faded to nothing but a sour taste when you woke up. It was impossible to feel shaken, to remember the fear of it, when he could hear Jace and his _agela_ coming in from a long night on patrol, real and alive and eminently reassuring.

He was almost asleep again by the time he recognised the footsteps in the corridor, and smiled to himself.

His door whispered as it opened, spilling light from the hallway across the floor. His back to the door, Simon didn’t move, didn’t speak, knowing that Jace could hear from his breathing that he was awake.

Sure enough, he heard Jace come in, closing the door behind him and coming over, climbing onto the bed. Simon held his eyes closed as Jace’s lips brushed his cheek. “You need a shower,” he murmured.

Jace snorted. “Good morning to you too,” he whispered back, and Simon could hear his grin.

“We really need to have a talk about your flawed definition of ‘morning’.” Simon rolled over to face his lover, trying and failing to put a serious face on. “It’s starting to worry me, this insistence that midnight equals morning.”

“It’s not midnight.” Jace lay propped on his elbow, and even in the dark Simon could glean the fondness in his face. “It’s four a.m. Morning.”

“I’m booking you into therapy,” Simon told him. “Tomorrow. Today. You need your head looked at, my friend, I think it’s serious.”

“Your own fault,” Jace replied without missing a beat. “You’re contagious.”

“I’m taking that as a compliment,” Simon declared, and Jace laughed, and leaned in to kiss him.

“I’ll go shower,” Jace murmured, brushing his thumb over Simon’s cheek as he pulled away.

“I will be here,” Simon told him solemnly, and Jace laughed again, low and warm, as he left the bed.

A minute later Simon heard the shower running, and he closed his eyes. A tension he hadn’t been aware of melted away with the familiar, _domestic_ sounds coming from the bathroom; Jace was home again, safe and sound. He wouldn’t have been so at ease if Alec or Izzy were hurt, so they must be fine too. Clary had texted hours ago when she made it home. Everyone was fine.

Could this ever be his life? He wondered suddenly. A boyfriend in the shower, a bed they shared, their own apartment… Was that ever going to be in the cards for him and Jace? The question soured the simple contentment of just a moment before. It was something he actively avoided thinking about, but the terrible understanding that had hit in the wake of his vision earlier dragged its razor claws gently through his thoughts—where was this going? Where _could_ it go? They were brothers—there was nowhere in the world that would accept what they were to each other. There was no rainbow flag for incest.

What would they tell Jocelyn, when she eventually woke up? _How_ could they tell her? If she looked at Simon the way Luke had… If she was disgusted by him, if she thought he was sick… He didn’t know if he could bear it.

They would always have to lie. Always.

And even if they did—even if they managed to keep it a secret—what then? Jace was sworn to the Shadowhunter cause, and Simon didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life—becoming a Grammy-winning musician was a cherished fantasy, but not exactly a realistic life goal—but becoming a Shadowhunter was not even on the table. This was his last year of high school—what were they going to do when Simon left for college? Or what if the Clave assigned the first _agela_ in a generation to some other Institute? What then?

_That isn’t what you’re afraid of though, is it?_ His guilt whispered. _There’s a more immediate reason he might leave, isn’t there? And of his own free will, not on the orders of the Clave._

Simon squeezed his eyes shut as guilt squeezed his lungs. _It’s late_ , he told himself, _he’s tired. He’s been patrolling all night. It’s not fair to tell him now. There’ll be a better time._

_You’ve been saying that for weeks. You swore you’d tell him after the performance. You owe him the truth._

_He won’t care. It doesn’t count._

_Then you have no reason not to tell him, do you?_

The water stopped running. Dread was a stone in his mouth; he swallowed, and felt it as a weight in his stomach, cold, bitter, terrifying. _Am I really going to tell him? Now?_

_It’s never going to be a good time. He needs to know. And you need to tell him._

But what if this was the thing that broke them? What if he was the one that broke it? How was he supposed to live with that, with knowing that they’d come apart because of him?

_You might be dying. Then you won’t have to live with it._

The thought actually startled a broken laugh from him. Trust his stupid brain to find the dark humour even in this.

He really did have to say it. He had to.

_Fuck_.

He opened his eyes as Jace came out of the bathroom, but was quiet. Said nothing as Jace perfunctorily dried himself and found a pair of pyjama bottoms in Simon’s wardrobe—and when had he stashed some of his clothes in Simon’s wardrobe, Simon wanted to know?

And then he left the towel in the bathroom and came to bed, and Simon felt like he was choking on his own heart as Jace climbed beneath the covers, his pulse a beat of ash across his tongue as Jace kissed him softly, lightly. Simon was wooden, was stone, too tense with shame to kiss back properly, to touch Jace the way he wanted to. He wanted Simiel so badly his hand twitched for it, because he’d never felt this afraid without a Greater Demon breathing down his neck before.

“Are you all right?” Jace whispered.

“Just tired,” Simon whispered back. He really wanted Simiel. Surely the cool _adamas_ would keep him from feeling so sick. So fucking _terrified_.

“If you’re sure.” Jace sounded doubtful, but he settled into the mattress. Was he hesitant? Yes. Probably. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew there was something wrong.

There was something wrong.

“I have to tell you something,” Simon said.

Fabric rustled as Jace turned his head on the pillow to face him. In the dark, Simon could hardly see him; he was only a shadow, dark silk on darker velvet. “I’m listening.”

Simon closed his eyes. “I slept with someone else.”

Silence fell like a hammer; heavy, bruising. Crushing, crushing the air out of the room, and Simon desperately wanted to see Jace’s face but didn’t dare look, because even in the dark Jace’s heartbreak would break him— “Jace, I’m so sorry—”

“Was it Alec or Izzy?”

Pure shock snapped Simon’s eyes open. _“What?”_

The blanket shifted, and Simon realised that Jace had shrugged. _Shrugged_. “I expected this eventually. And now that we’re _agelai_ … It’s not exactly a surprise.” His voice turned wry. “Granted, I didn’t think it would happen so soon, and I’m not sure how they kept it from me, but—it’s okay, Simon. This is normal.”

_“Normal?”_ Simon echoed. Despite lying down, he felt dizzy, as if the earth and sky had suddenly exchanged places. “You _expected_ me to sleep with Izzy? With _Alec?”_

Jace propped himself up on his arm. “We’re all one person,” he said. “Simon, you know this. We talked about it before, remember? At my Dedication.”

“No, you said you and Alec were _legally_ one person. No one said anything about my having to sleep with him!”

“You don’t _have_ to, by the Angel! It’s not like that. It’s just—it’s normal, that’s all.” Jace was silent a moment. “Strong emotions strengthen the bonds we have,” he said finally. “They blur the lines of…of who we are. Alec and Izzy, they can feel how much I care about you. It can be difficult for them to remember that they don’t feel that for you too.” He shrugged again. “Everyone knows that if you marry someone with a _parabatai_ , you’re really marrying the _parabatai_ too. How could you not be? It’s the same with an _agela_. It’s _worse_ with an _agela_ , because the bonds are even stronger.”

Simon’s mind, wide awake now, was racing. “Is this why Alec hated me so much before?” he blurted, appalled.

He thought Jace might have grinned. “Maybe a little. He knew that if I loved you, he’d end up loving you too. Sooner or later.”

“Holy Batman, Robin.” Simon fell back against his pillow, his hands over his eyes. And to think of all the times he’d joked about polyamorous Shadowhunters, back before he and Jace were together… “This is the kind of thing you people need to tell me!”

Jace peered over at him. “So it was Izzy, then?” he asked casually.

It was like being dunked in ice-cold water, held under as he fought for breath. “No,” Simon whispered.

Jace said nothing.

Simon took a deep breath, lowering his hands and looking over at his _aikane_. “It was after Renwicks,” he said quietly. Wishing, now, that he could see Jace’s face after all.“Before I sang for you. Before us. I was so—I was trying not to want you, I thought I wasn’t supposed to. Luke—” His voice cracked, and he had to swallow, hard, before he could go on. “Luke said I was sick, he tried to put me in a—” Did Shadowhunters have words for conversion centres? “—a hospital, and I just wanted to not be, not be—”

“Simon, ssh, ssh.” Jace leaned forward, and his hand was against Simon’s cheek, soothing and warm and—was he _smiling?_ “Is that all? You scared me, _aikane_ , I thought you meant something much worse than that.”

“I’m sorry,” Simon whispered.

He felt Jace shrug. “I did the same.”

Simon stared at his indistinct face, hardly daring to believe what he was hearing. “You—what?”

Jace’s thumb stroked back and forth over Simon’s cheekbone, so, so gently. “Not a guy,” he clarified. “I thought maybe you were—a mistake, a crazy accident. That I could remember how to want girls, want someone who wasn’t you, if I tried hard enough. Be a proper Shadowhunter again.” He shrugged again. “It wasn’t right. But I thought it didn’t count—we weren’t together then, were we?”

“No,” Simon agreed, a little stunned. “No, we weren’t.” _It wasn’t right_ —no, it hadn’t been. He remembered sitting in the bathroom of a stranger’s apartment afterwards, trying to be quiet as he cried, missing Jace, longing for him. He’d never felt as alone as he had in that moment.

He’d texted Jace the next morning, done with pretending he could live without him. He’d barely managed a week.

“So it’s fine.” The blanket shifted as Jace leaned forward and kissed him, softly, on the mouth. “I don’t care, Simon.”

Beginning to believe it, Simon felt himself smile at the words, their words. “I don’t care either.” Not about the girl, whoever she’d been, and not about his own experience—not if Jace didn’t, not if Jace said it didn’t matter. A sick, heavy knot in his stomach came undone with the relief of it; finally, now, he could let go of it, could forget about it. Could stop feeling so fucking guilty, knowing that he hadn’t hurt his _aikane._ “ _Ol boaluahe gi_ , Jace.”

Jace kissed the words back into his mouth, soft as summer sunlight. _“Ol boaluahe gi_ , Simon. Always.”

*

The third waking was a lot more dramatic than the previous two had been.

One moment, Simon was deeply asleep, Jace’s arm wrapped around his waist. In the next, the bedroom door—and Simon’s eyes—slammed open, and Simiel was across the room and hovering at Alec’s throat before any of them could blink.

“Oh for Raziel’s sake,” Isabelle said from the hallway. “Enough with the flying seraph blades already!”

“Simon!” Jace, sitting up, shook Simon’s shoulder. “Don’t—”

But Simiel had already fallen to the carpet, and Simon was shaking, retreating into Jace’s embrace. “Alec—God, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”

“It’s not your fault.” Jace glared at his _parabatai_. “They know they’re not supposed to surprise you like that. Did you think I wouldn’t hear you?” he snapped, apparently in response to some silent communication.

“Apparently not clearly enough,” Alec said, more calmly than should have been humanly possible. “She wants to see him too.”

“ ‘She’?” Simon echoed. “She who?” He looked at Jace. “Who wants to see me?”

Jace had been looking past him, at his _agelai_ ; at Simon’s question, he focussed on him instead—but not quickly enough to hide the flash of real, desperate fear that had burned in his face for a breath.

“Jace?” Simon asked, nervous now. At Alec’s feet, Simiel glittered, fire in ice. “What? What is it?”

Alec answered for him. “The Inquisitor,” he said. “She’s here, and she wants to see us.”

* * *

NOTES

 

The movie Olianthe and Clary discuss, _Guardian of the Moon_ , is the French animated film directed by Alexandre Heboyan and Benoît Philippon.

_Álainn, réalta croí, anwylaf—_ ‘beautiful, star heart, dearest’.

_Dsirgil ita oi maninriiax?_ —What is this dream? (Enochian).

_Adokaz-Aoi, Nazksad-Enaikat-dë_ —prince of stars, sword of the King (demonic Enochian).

_Ol boaluahe gi_ —I love you (Enochian).


	8. Inquisitor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the wonderful reviews, lovelies! I am out of the hospital now and healing very well. Well enough to write you a chapter! I'd say I hope you enjoy it, but I know you won't. Still, hit the review button, let me know just how much you hated it ;)

Alec swept into the Institute with his head held high, his _agelai_ flanking him as if into battle, Simon held protectively in the centre of the arrowhead they made. _*Protection for who?*_ Izzy thought, and Jace might have smirked if they weren’t all carved so fine, because Simon’s every gesture left an echo of light behind it, and in his black-and-silver Morgenstern _cóada_ , he burned.

But so did Sariel. The _cóadas_ commissioned just for this occasion and delivered before dawn this morning were of the colour the Nephilim called _febrile_ , flame; not the Lightwood red and aurelian but the blazing shimmer of true fire, amber and xanthous and pearl-white, roaring blue and sunspot gold and heartsblood crimson. It was a colour only the fae could conjure from cloth, and it made the _agelai_ look like fire elementals, like dragons in human skin as they walked as one beneath the arched ceiling of the Institute’s entrance hall, and up the stairs towards the figure waiting for them there.

Robert Lightwood had two spots of colour on his cheeks as the _agela_ and its charge ascended the steps. His knuckles were white as bone where they clutched the railing. _“Pater,”_ he said evenly, acknowledging Alec as his _paterfamilias_. Alec did not flinch at it. “Janim. Isabelle. And this must be Symeon.”

“I don’t use that name,” Simon said coolly.

“We’re here to see the Inquisitor,” Alec said before his father could respond. “If you would show us to her.” He made his voice hard and courteous, the cut-diamond voice of a _paterfamilias_ , and ignored how it hurt to speak to his father this way. This was necessary.

Besides—he, and Alec’s mother, had tried to throw Jace away like trash. He no longer deserved Alec’s respect.

Robert dipped his head shallowly, keeping his thoughts to himself. “Of course.”

The Institute’s Great Council Chamber was meant as a place for the adult Shadowhunters who answered to that Institute to gather and discuss the canton’s health. The heavy oak doors were carved with the Clave’s sigil, four intertwined Cs set with gold, warding and protecting the room against spying or intrusion.

When Robert pushed open the doors, Simon gasped as if he’d been struck, and through Jace’s worried glance Alec saw Simon rock back, clutching his chest with an expression that was all shock and pain and longing.

At the sound, the six golems of the Inquisitor rose from their seats. Seven feet tall, each golem was an enormous edifice of silver and stone and steel, shaped to look passingly like a Nephilim woman—but they were hairless, their faces elegant but uniform silver masks. Two centuries ago their ancestors had nearly destroyed the Nephilim at the behest of a madman, but the Shadowhunters had triumphed, and taken the technology as spoils. Nephilim alchemists had perfected it, and the result had lifted the burden on the lower Nephilim castes—now golems performed most manual labour, and the bulk of the inquisition force was made up of weaponised golems like these, dressed in dragonhide gear with the Mark of the Clave stamped into their brows.

All three _agelai_ braced as the golems moved, the edges of their minds blurring like chalk in the rain as fear-wariness invited them to skindance—they had no weapons, could not approach the High Inquisitor armed, should they submit or fight or run if they were to be taken now? The golems walked around the table, three on either side, and the _agelai_ ’s heartbeats melted into one—

And in a flutter of dark gear, all six golems dropped to one knee, curling their articulated right hands into fists and thumping them against their left shoulders. _“Hail,”_ they intoned, six identical voices issuing from lips that did not move. _“Hail the light in the darkness, the sun in the night. Hail, Sariel Firstborn.”_

For a small eternity, nobody moved, all eyes on the golems kneeling in obeisance. Alec wasn’t sure he even _breathed_.

What— What—

Jace’s ears heard Simon whisper something, a single word—but so low, so quiet, maybe it was only a breath—

And the tableau broke, ripped apart like embroidered cloth. The golems jerked to their feet, hands falling to their sides, and the Inquisitor rose from her chair an icon of fury. “Explain yourselves,” she snarled, and the shock sluiced away from the _agelai_ like water from stone as they rallied, hardened, fell together like three rivers into one.

And as one, they examined her, three sets of eyes absorbing information processed by the power of three minds in a flash. The Inquisitor was younger than they had expected—perhaps the same age as their parents, or only a little older. Her pale blonde hair was tied in a queue, and she wore not a _cóada_ but a formal _deplois_ , a floor-length _palla_ coat-robe worn open over an equally long _vestis_ robe belted at the waist; the _palla_ was a deep, terrible red velvet like a spill of blood, the _vestis_ black as a dark moon, with the sign of the Clave hanging from a chain around her neck. Her eyes were the same bronzed-brown as her necklace, and they were burning with disbelieving rage. To either side of her, her Shadowhunter guards—a blond Asian man and a white, dark-haired woman, probably _parabatai_ —were as still as the golems, their eyes fixed unblinking on the _agela_.

“Inquisitor,” Robert began, recovering himself, “surely you’re not suggesting that they suborned your golems?”

“I’m _suggesting_ no such thing,” the Inquisitor snapped. _“I_ did not command them to sing praises to this—this _Sariel_ , whomever that might be—”

“It’s me,” the _agela_ said together. “I’m Sariel.”

Behind them, at their heart, Simon laughed softly.

Alec dug his nails into his palm, and the one diverged into three again. “We are,” he repeated. _“Agela_ Sariel.” He glanced at the golems. “The first of our generation.”

 _Sariel Firstborn._ He’d never heard of golems kowtowing to _agelai_ before—and neither had Jace or Izzy—but they always genuflected to members of the Clave, so maybe…?

Well, what else could they have meant? Probably it was just a piece of their _geas_ that had been forgotten, given the dearth of _agelae_ …

The Inquisitor frowned, and Alec could see her mind racing, coming to the same conclusion. She glanced at the _agelai_ ’s _cóadas_ , and he saw, too, the moment she understood the significance of the colour, the _uniform_ of their clothing; febrile, for new beginnings rising phoenix-like from the flames. Her cheeks went white.

 _*Don’t you dare smirk,*_ Izzy warned Jace, but it was Isabelle that tasted sweet and sharp and smug, lemon sorbet and ginger; Isabelle who exuded satisfaction at seeing the Inquisitor choke on what they’d done.

“You—” They had all forgotten their mother. Maryse was, if anything, paler than the Inquisitor, her finely-drawn features contorted between disbelief and betrayal. “Alexander—Isabelle— You _did not.”_

 _*Don’t say it,*_ Alec thought at his sister, feeling the words rise to the tip of her tongue, the _we most certainly did._

Izzy sent a mental grin his way.

“Enough,” Robert said from behind them. Alec did not turn away from the Inquisitor’s coolly considering expression. “We let you have your joke yesterday, Isabelle, but this is no time for games.”

There were different kinds of _cóada_ , meant for different occasions. A wedding _cóada_ ’s left sleeve was attached by buttons, easy to remove so that your spouse could draw the marriage Mark upon your arm. _Cóadas_ meant for balls were cut differently than those worn to Clave meetings or the temples.

Those worn to Reveals had no uniform design, because the _parabatai_ and _parastathentes_ runes could be placed anywhere on the body. But Sariel all wore theirs in the same place, and so they pulled aside the collars of their coats and tugged down, drawing free the flap of fabric that bared the _agela_ bond writ over their hearts.

“It’s not a game,” Alec said evenly. “We are Sariel. Bound and witnessed.”

“By who?” Maryse demanded, but Alec paid her no attention, focussed only on the Inquisitor. Her gaze had become coldly speculative as she looked over the three of them more closely, and it made him uneasy.

“I have no doubt the forms were followed,” the Inquisitor said dryly, to Alec’s surprise. She, then, did not underestimate them so much as to think they had faked the runes somehow; fully believed Alec and Izzy capable of taking this plunge to rescue their brother. It was an eerie sensation, to be respected by this woman he could not help thinking of as an enemy. “You should be celebrating, Maryse, Robert. Think of the honour this will bring to your fallen House.” She did not quite sound sarcastic.

Every word she spoke only made Sariel grow warier. This woman was not what they had expected.

“Close the door,” the Inquisitor ordered. As Robert did so, she continued, “Dark hair, Lightwood eyes—you two must be Alexander and Isabelle.” Her eyes flicked to Jace like knife-points. “Janim,” she said, as if his name was bitter in her mouth. Then she looked past them to the one who stood at the centre of their triangle. “Which means the coal at the heart of this fire must be Symeon.”

“The name my mother gave me,” Simon said coolly, “is Simon.”

The wind breathed outside, and Alec heard it, so total was the silence that fell over the room. The dramatic way in which Sariel had chosen to reveal themselves was one thing—that was bold, it spoke of strategizing and internal loyalty without ever quite crossing the line into defiance or disrespect, all points in a warrior’s favour.

Directly contradicting the High Inquisitor of the Clave was another thing entirely.

“I couldn’t care less what your _vainottu_ mother decided to call you when she fled her responsibilities,” the Inquisitor said, and Maryse inhaled sharply as her husband hissed. Even the Inquisitor’s Shadowhunter escorts looked shocked. Only Alec’s iron will kept his _agelai_ from visibly reacting, kept Jace from lunging across the room and spitting in her face at the enormous, terrible insult: _monster, world-poison, that which we hunt_. He held his _agelai_ back with reins of steel and prayed for Simon’s celestial fracture lines to hold, to not shatter apart into black and blood. “You were Acknowledged as Symeon Vangelis Morgenstern, and that is what I will call you.”

Izzy glanced at Simon from the corner of her eye, and all Sariel saw him tilt his head to one side with a smile sweet as a fresh-forged blade. “Well, I acknowledge that you’re a _vainottu_ yourself, but I wasn’t planning on calling you one. Still, if that’s how this works.”

The funny thing was that Alec still hoped. Why did he bother even hoping for the best anymore?

“I beg your pardon?” the Inquisitor asked softly.

“You should,” Simon told her, still smiling that smile, “but it won’t be necessary. Thank you,” he added.

They were all going to die.

“I don’t think you understand who you’re talking to,” the Inquisitor said.

“Of course I do,” Simon said. “You’re the person who just called the greatest woman I’ve ever known—the woman who is directly responsible for the failure of Valentine’s Uprising—a monster. The woman who gave up her _entire life_ to keep the Mortal Cup out of Valentine’s hands. She gave up magic, her heritage, her _name_ , to protect something your people let Valentine steal away in the first place.” He shrugged one shoulder, his hands in his pockets. “If you consider someone like that a monster, then you must have crawled from a place so deep in the Pit they didn’t even have _legends_ of light.”

“Simon, _shut up,”_ Jace hissed desperately. Alec knew his panic, felt it like a knife embedded in his heart, cold and final.

The Inquisitor stared at Simon for a long, noose-tight moment. “I see that I was mistaken,” she said finally. “I believed, when I was sent here, that it was your brother I would see stripped and blinded for his part in Valentine’s machinations.” The _agela_ stiffened. “But clearly your father’s blood runs true in you both.” Her voice iced over. “Because you are a minor, and raised outside the embrace of Raziel’s wings, I will ignore your words this once. Do not look for a second chance. Now sit, all of you.”

“Or what?” Simon asked, for all the world as if he were only curious.

“Or I will have you thrown in a cell, minor or no. _Sit!”_

They sat. Alec’s heart was in his throat; Izzy was frigidly unsurprised, in dark, lashing agreement with Simon. Alec sat between his brother and sister, Simon next to Jace. Robert crossed the room to sit next to his wife.

There were seven adult Shadowhunters in the room, and Isabelle with them. Simon couldn’t kill the Inquisitor.

 _But what if he tries?_ Alec worried as the Inquisitor took her seat again, the golems arrayed behind her against the wall like an honour guard. _What will we do then?_

Neither Jace nor Isabelle had an answer for him. Nor for the other horror, heavy as an anchor hung from their ribs: the Inquisitor had come to strip Jace of his runes. That, at least, was averted now—she couldn’t possibly destroy an _agela_ without conclusive evidence. The Clave would have her Marks if she tried.

“I was sent here,” the Inquisitor said as they all settled, “with a threefold mission: to ascertain the truth of the events surrounding the Cup’s reappearance, to pass judgement on the Shadowhunter Janim Morgenstern, and to formalise the Clave’s legal custody of Symeon Morgenstern.” She shot Simon a sharp glance. “Which is clearly all too needed.”

 _*NO!*_ The fierce, desperate denial screamed through Alec’s skull from Jace’s mind, searing away boundaries and definitions in a blaze of silver-white terror-rage; a solar flare inside their heads and hearts, sweeping away any shadows of personality, any concept of the individual, reforging all it contained into a brilliant diamond, multi-faceted and spinning like a star.

“Why is the Clave seeking custody of Symeon?” the _agela_ asked through Alec’s body. It was the eldest body, with the most Law-abiding reputation attached to it; it made the best mouthpiece for dealing with authority figures. The Inquisitor, the Lightwood parents; they all knew intellectually that they were dealing with three-as-one, but the _agela_ was willing to bet that it was something people forgot in practise.

Beneath the table, they reached for Simon’s hand. He let them take it, but didn’t squeeze back when their fingers entwined with his. He didn’t move at all.

“The Clave _seeks_ nothing,” the Inquisitor corrected sharply. “As an orphaned minor, Symeon is a ward of the Clave. When I return to Idris, he will be coming with me. There will be no negotiating on this point. The Law is clear.”

 _‘Your father’s banished and your mother broke her oath to the Clave; they’re both dead to the Nephilim,’_ Alec had told Simon once, and he must have remembered it because he sat still and silent. That silence, so markedly different to the defiance of just a few minutes before, pricked Sariel like needles sliding through skin.

“There is a scion of his House of age,” the _agela_ said, and if fire licked the edges of their words then passing through Alec’s throat cooled them to courtesy. Just. “There is no need for him to be removed from his family.”

“There is every need,” the Inquisitor said, “given who his family is. The scion you mention,” she nodded her head mockingly at Jace’s body, “is a penniless criminal only barely Dedicated. How does he plan to support his brother?”

“You have yet to present any evidence that Janim was involved in his father’s crimes,” Sariel said coolly. “As for the other—the Morgenstern and Fairchild assets were taken by the Clave when it was thought there were no living heirs of either House. We will be petitioning for them to be returned, since of course the Law does not lay the actions of the parents at the feet of babes.” And Jace was hardly penniless even without his family’s fortunes, after all the hundreds of demons he’d killed over the years. Thousands, maybe.

The Inquisitor’s eyes narrowed. “Of course,” she echoed. “And you are free to challenge the Clave’s guardianship—in the proper time and place. But I must say, I find it hard to believe that an eighteen year old boy raised by _Valentine_ will be deemed a suitable guardian—for anyone. Despite its recent shortcomings, the Morgenstern House is a great one, and the Clave are anxious to see its most recent issue raised under Raziel’s aegis.”

Through Jace’s fingers, they felt Simon’s hand curl hard, his nails scoring his leg. He was vibrating like a thrown dagger come to a sudden stop. “Except that I have no interest in becoming a Shadowhunter,” he said, and though his tone was even Sariel heard the whisper of a snarl behind it, like a monster caught in briars. “I don’t want any part of your world. Ma’am. I have a life here, and I like it just fine.”

The Inquisitor’s lip curled. “What you _like_ is irrelevant,” she said. “You are a child. Decisions as to your welfare are to be made by your legal guardians, and in this case, that is the Clave.”

Simon stared at her. “Are you serious? You people send seventeen year olds to _die_ every night on patrol, but you don’t let them decide where they want to live? You can’t have it both ways!”

“You are not a normal seventeen year old Shadowhunter,” the Inquisitor said flatly. “You are untrained and undisciplined, raised to think of yourself as a mundane. I would no more trust a mundane teenager to behave as befits a proper Shadowhunter than I would trust him against an Eidolon.” She held up an imperious hand before Simon could do more than open his mouth in furious protest. “Enough! I did not summon you here to listen to the whinging of children!”

Power lapped against Sariel’s Marks, a whisper like the surf drawing back from the shore before the tsunami; on the other side of the table Robert twitched, and the Inquisitor’s female bodyguard rubbed her arm, but they didn’t understand what they were feeling, didn’t _recognise_ it as the _agela_ did. Simon’s hand was a vise on Jace’s, and through Jace’s ears they could hear the soft, almost inaudible groaning of the arm of Simon’s chair, the wood slowly giving way beneath his fingers. In another moment it would be loud enough for the rest of the table to hear.

Sariel pulled Jace’s hand free and locked it around Simon’s wrist, driving nails into scarred skin.

The sense of impending pressure vanished. Simon sucked in a hard breath and leaned back in his chair, his face very pale. And didn’t pull his arm away.

The Inquisitor held out a hand, and one of the golems took an object from the satchel at its hip and placed it in her palm. “The purpose of this meeting,” she said, setting the fist-sized crystal before her on the table, “is to establish the events of Valentine’s re-emergence in August.” Drawing a stele from within her sleeve, she casually Marked a circle of runes around the stone, a _telesma_ Sariel didn’t recognise but could guess the purpose of. Sure enough, the crystal began to glow as the _telesma_ became active. “You will answer my questions quickly and succinctly to the best of your ability.” Her voice was hard, warning that their best had better match up to what she thought it should be.

“Now.” She leaned back, the _telesma_ waiting to record their answers. “Explain to me how you found the Mortal Cup.”

*

Something in this room was singing.

He had heard it the moment the doors opened, a song of silver fire and holy war, and it had drowned him out. The world had gone dark in a flare, and Simon had gone with it, vanished into something like sleep, something like death, with that song howling through his soul like a solar storm.

When he came back, it had been to the six golems rising to their feet from the floor.

The pain in Simon’s wrist shivered and writhed through him, kissing his every nerve with sharp teeth and a razored tongue, etching him, anchoring him. His head was full of beating wings and lapping waves and that _song_ , the song which had not stopped singing but the bite of Jace’s nails kept him from drowning, from getting lost, from breaking open and unleashing—

_She wants to take me away. She wants to take me away. She wants to—_

Who was it holding his hand? Jace? Alec or Isabelle, reaching through Jace’s body? Or something stranger still, that hive mind personality they’d named Sariel, that was all of them and none?

Did it love him like Jace did? What would that be like, being loved by that? By something so far outside Simon’s understanding? He knew he didn’t really, couldn’t really comprehend the bond Jace had with his brother and sister, couldn’t grasp the enormous intimacy of it, the surrender, the holy ascension of giving up your sense of self to become part of a greater whole. It wasn’t something Simon thought he could ever do. It was kind of terrifying to contemplate.

Nearly as terrifying as the thought that _Agela_ Sariel saw him falling into bed with all of them as a foregone conclusion. With Isabelle, who was as painfully beautiful and untouchable as a seraphim; with GQ-model Alec, who hated what he’d done to Jace, who had a boyfriend of his own and had known from the very start that his heart would end up in Simon’s hand—

Simon pulled his wrist against Jace’s nails, his heart pounding. “Harder,” he whispered, barely breathing, and to his surprise Jace’s fingers flexed without hesitation. Simon hissed softly, his spine going lax as his skin tore thickly beneath Jace’s nails, the hot brightness whiplashing through Simon’s body, up and around his throat, into his brain.

Tiny drops of blood trickled down his wrist, pomegranate seeds sweeter than Persephone’s ever could have been.

Simon closed his eyes briefly. _She wants to take me away!_ But he had pomegranate seeds now, anchoring him to earth as Persephone’s had tied her to Hades, and the thought didn’t send fissures tearing through his control, his sanity, cracks for an angel to break out through. He could breathe. He could _focus_.

They had practised the story they would tell the Inquisitor over and over. They’d had no choice. Outside of particular government branches, Light Worlders were utterly forbidden from learning of the Shadow World, and the penalties for Shadowhunters breaking that interdiction were beyond severe—almost as bad as the punishments handed down for fraternisation. They couldn’t let anyone find about Clary, find out how much she knew and had been involved in. And Jace was adamant that they give away as few of Simon’s unbelievable abilities as possible.

But where Simon would have simply lied his ass off, the Shadowhunters had insisted on sticking as closely to the truth as possible. _‘She can compel the truth from us if she asks,’_ Izzy had said briefly, but all three Shadowhunters had been more focussed on concocting a believable story than explaining what the hell that was supposed to mean.

_‘It means you need to think like a faerie. If she asks a question, answer exactly what she asked, not what she meant. Don’t lie outright, but twist the truth as much as you need to. Look, like this…’_

And Simon was at the heart of nearly every lie.

Simon had been the one to shoot out the skylight and destroy Abbadon’s manifestation, not Clary. Alec hadn’t been as grievously injured as he’d seemed; he certainly hadn’t needed Simon’s impossible Marks to keep him alive. Simon had hidden behind a bookcase for Hodge’s betrayal, not been locked into a cage of runes he couldn’t possibly break out of; and it was then that he’d overheard the location of Valentine’s base at Renwicks. He’d gone to the werewolves because he’d been raised in the Light World and didn’t know how to contact the Clave for help. He and Luke had come up with the idea of switching the Mortal Cup card for a fake that Simon had drawn, mimicking his mother’s style as best he could. At Renwicks, he’d found his mom and Jace. Valentine had made his little revelations, Luke had interrupted, they’d switched the cards and Valentine escaped through the Portal, destroying it behind him.

_(Luke would back them up, if the Inquisitor bothered to interview the werewolves too. Clary had emailed him, sparing Simon the trial of speaking to the man who’d tried to put him in a conversion centre. She said Luke had asked after Simon, but they’d sent Luke no reply. He didn’t deserve one.)_

Okay, so it wasn’t all that close to the truth. But it wasn’t all that far off it, either, and whatever method the Inquisitor had of discovering their lies, she couldn’t use it on Simon or Izzy because they were both minors. So it was Simon who lied, calmly, evenly, blood dripping lazily down his wrist as the pain soothed sweet as morphine. Jace’s lips moved occasionally, describing waking up in Renwicks, discovering that his father wasn’t dead, wasn’t a Wayland; but the main body of the story was Simon’s, and they let him tell it.

Well. The abridged version, anyway.

The Inquisitor took no notes and interrupted only rarely to ask her sharp-edged, frosted questions, asking for more detail, for elaboration on a point. With Jace’s nails in his skin, Simon didn’t falter once, barely cognizant that he should have been afraid of stumbling. Even through his haze, it didn’t seem like the Inquisitor was paying him a whole lot of attention. Her questions weren’t intended to poke holes in his story, and she didn’t try to trip him up or confuse him, the way detectives on the cop shows always did with their suspects. But then, maybe she didn’t think of him as a suspect. In the end, he and Jace _hadn’t_ left with Valentine, and they _had_ retrieved the Cup—even if they claimed that Simon had found the _telesma_ needed to get it out of the card in a note Jocelyn had hidden under Simon’s bed. Those weren’t the actions of criminals. If they kept the incest out of it, if they toned down just how devastating Valentine’s revelation had been—they still told her everything that could possibly prove helpful in tracking the bastard down.

It was themselves they wanted to protect, not their sire.

Finally the spool of story ran empty, and Simon fell silent. Belatedly, he noticed that his throat was sore, hoarse and dry. His wrist throbbed, but the bleeding had stopped some time ago, leaving only darkening red threads criss-crossing over his skin.

The Inquisitor stirred. “Thank you, Symeon.” Her hands were clasped before her on the table. “I believe I now have a sufficient understanding of the events in question.”

Uncertain of what else to do, Simon nodded acknowledgement. He wasn’t sure his voice was up to telling her she was welcome.

Especially when she most certainly _wasn’t_.

The Inquisitor—what was her name? Did she have one, or did you give it up when you took the title?—used her stele to unmake the _telesma_ around the crystal, and its light went dim. One of the golems stepped up to the table, retrieved the stone, and vanished it beneath its clothes. Simon found himself wondering what it looked like under there—was it a solid statue, or only a framework skeleton? Were there panels in its chest, places to store evidence more secure than pockets and bags?

“Now,” the Inquisitor continued, and for a moment Simon glimpsed a terrible anticipation in her eyes, “Janim. If you would?”

Simon swallowed a hiss as Jace’s nails slid free of his wrist; the pain did not disappear, but it weakened, and Simon tried not to think of a floodwall beginning to crumble as his _aikane_ rose from his chair.

“Where do you want me?” he asked, and the Inquisitor gestured to the space at the right of the room, between the round table and the wall.

And from beneath the table, the Inquisitor drew a sword.

The song that the pain had kept at bay—had reduced to a low, terrifying lullaby echoing in the back of Simon’s skull—roared aloud, and the arms of his chair gave way under Simon’s panicked grip, wood crumpling and splintering beneath his fingers. The sword, the sword was singing, with its hilt a sweep of silver wings and a blade that was metal one second and a bar of shimmering interwoven Marks the next and Simon could not feel his own heartbeat with that sound filling the world—

“Symeon?” The Inquisitor was staring at him, and, oh, they must have heard the chair breaking— “Are you well?”

Desperate, Simon drove his own nails into the marks Jace had left on his wrist, nearly gasping as air suddenly flooded into his lungs, as the volume dial on the sword-song twisted viciously downwards. Pain blanketed him, a crystal shield muffling the song— “Y-yes,” he managed, trying not to pant. “Sorry. I’m fine.”

 _Sielu_. The sword’s name was Sielu. The word burnt like snowglare in his head.

The Inquisitor’s gaze was hard, almost suspicious as she examined him. Simon forced himself to smile. “Just a headache,” he explained, just managing to keep the hysteria of the thought out of his voice.

“Hm.” But it must have satisfied her, because she took up Sielu without another word to him, pushing back her chair and following Jace to the designated space.

_‘The Angel gave three items to the first Shadowhunters. A cup, a sword, and a mirror. The Silent Brothers have the Sword, and the Cup and the Mirror were in Idris, at least until Valentine came along.’_

Simon had come face to face with the Mortal Sword before. When he and Jace had gone to the Silent City looking for answers, Sielu had hung on the wall behind the council of Silent Brothers—even if, then, he could not hear its name. Then, it had been enormous, too large for any human to lift, never mind wield as a weapon. It was smaller now, the straight, fine blade shorter than it had been then, but Simon didn’t doubt for an instant that it was the same sword. Even without the distinctive spread-wings hilt, the song it sang was… He did not doubt that this sword could change its shape as easily as any seraph blade.

He pressed his nails harder into his wrist.

The Inquisitor held Sielu two-handed, one hand wrapped around the hilt and the other resting under the blade, as if she meant to present it to him. Jace stood with his back to the wall, an angel clothed in fire. If he was afraid, then Simon couldn’t see it in his straight spine and his still-pool face.

“Janim Christopher Morgenstern,” the Inquisitor said, her voice ringing out like a proclamation in the quiet room, “you are sworn to the Angel’s justice. Will you submit to it now?”

“I will.” Jace held out his hands, palm up, and received the Sword.

Instantly he staggered, and Alec and Izzy flinched beside Simon. Simon whipped his head to glance at them. The shock in their eyes, the blurry confusion, said it all; they _had_ been mind-merged, but the touch of Sielu must have cut them apart, and when he looked back at Jace the blond was paler than he had been, the bones of his face stark and white, jaw locked, eyes wide.

In pain. The Sword was _hurting_ him.

A dizzying wave of fury crashed against the floodgates, and Simon dug his nails harder into his wrist. Fresh blood graced his nails, wet his skin, a fragile chain of ruby links to keep him contained. It was already fracturing. _He_ was fracturing, and why not, even diamonds would shatter under enough pressure, splinter apart like glass and explode into a blizzard of star-struck shards, and Simon was no diamond—he was only obsidian, dark and sharp and brittle as bone, brittle as a heart—

“Is Valentine Morgenstern your father?” the Inquisitor asked sharply, and Simon was dragged back to the real world, to Jace’s tightened shoulders and drawn throat, his hands closed rictus-like around Sielu’s blade.

“I believe so,” Jace answered, and his voice was rough, not with lust but pain and ebony wings spread wide in Simon’s head, feathered with razors, with knives, with glittering obsidian— “He raised me. The Morgenstern ring accepts me. As far as I can tell, he’s my father.”

“Did you know you were a Morgenstern before the incident at Renwicks?”

“No. I thought I was a Wayland. I thought we were both Waylands.”

The Inquisitor had let Simon’s tale pass almost unremarked, but now the questions came like bullets, like hail; had Jace really grown up in the Wayland manor, isolated, alone? Hadn’t he ever met other Shadowhunters? Hadn’t there ever been a point where he should have realised the truth of his heritage?

Yes. No. No.

Had he really believed his father was dead? Hadn’t he and Valentine planned to plant Jace among the Lightwoods, like a cuckoo chick, like a time-bomb? Had, perhaps, the Lightwoods been in on the plan?

Yes. No. No.

Even with her back to him, Simon could read—feel—hear the Inquisitor’s growing frustration. Her voice grew sharper as she rephrased her questions, asking the same thing a dozen different ways, clawing at Jace with her words as if she could tear him open and find the truth she wanted buried inside his skin. Jace’s hands curled tighter and tighter around the Mortal Sword, until blood began to trickle from his palms, from between his fingers, but his voice remained level, his answers clear: no, he had not known that Valentine wanted the Mortal Cup. No, he had not arranged for Valentine to get the Cup. He had not even known where the Cup was.

No, he had not let Valentine escape. No, he had not arranged for Valentine to escape. He had done everything he could to hinder Valentine’s escape. No, he did not know where Valentine had gone—although the Portal had been open to the Wayland manor. He might have gone there first. But no, he did not know where Valentine might have gone after that, or where he was now.

No, he was not in communication with Valentine. No, he had no way to communicate with Valentine, even if he wanted to. Which he did not.

Yes, of course he wanted Valentine brought to justice for his crimes.

It went on for a glacier’s age. Alec’s knuckles threatened to break through the skin of his hand as he clutched the table, and Jace’s blood kept dripping, dripping, Chinese water torture on Simon’s brain, acid eating away at his control. Only the vague, slippery memory that this woman could have Jace stripped of his Marks if not outright executed kept Simon in his seat, kept his teeth shut tight on the snarl of rage building in his chest.

It was so hard. The wind of beating wings buffeted his walls, eroding them, tearing them down. Jace was no traitor, Jace was stupidly, infuriatingly loyal to a people that didn’t deserve it, and she was hurting him, he was _bleeding_ , his Jace was _bleeding_ —

It was so fucking wrong, he could destroy a Greater Demon for doing so much less to his _aikane_ but this woman, this he had to endure, had to _let happen_ —

The fingers of his bleeding wrist twitched. It would be so easy to make her take Sielu from Jace’s hands and fall upon it, drive it into her own chest—

“Do you have _any alliance_ with Valentine?” the Inquisitor demanded finally, almost angrily.

 _“No.”_ The Sword tore the word from Jace’s lips, lips gone pale with pain and effort. “I’m not helping him. I never did, and I never will. My loyalty is to the Clave.”

The Inquisitor paused, wearing her frustration like a cloak. _“Only_ to the Clave?”

“No,” Jace admitted. “To my _agela_ and my brother too.”

The Inquisitor made a noise that was almost a snarl. “What are you not telling me?”

“I’m getting hungry,” Jace said instantly, Slytherin-like, dodging away from what she meant and answering only what she’d said—and this time the Inquisitor _did_ snarl, and her hand rose up—

“Imogen!” Maryse cried, appalled, and the Inquisitor—Imogen—lowered her arm.

“What are you not telling me,” she hissed, “that I would want to know? What Law have you broken, Morgenstern? Tell me how the taint of your father has manifested in you, because I know that it has! Silvered tongue or no, your blood is _poison_ , and your lies cannot save you. So tell me, Janim Christopher Morgenstern, Lucifer’s child—tell me the great wrong you have wrought!”

Jace cried out as his hands clamped tight around the Sword, and the blood, the blood coming from his hands, the terrible convulsions shuddering through his body, shaking the Sword—

 _“Enough,”_ Simon snarled, shoving to his feet, and his chair went flying, tumbling onto the floor, the splinters of its arms scattering like ashes, “enough, you _teloah_ , leave him _alone_ —”

“Simon!” Izzy cried, and Alec was reaching for him, and the Inquisitor half-turned with ire in her eyes and the golems all stepped forward as one, their hands becoming long, shining blades and the black ocean in Simon’s head was rolling into a tsunami, the surf leaving the crimson sand bare and empty as an angel howled over the waves—

And Jace sobbed aloud, all the air leaving him in a rush. “I’m sleeping with my brother,” he gasped, and fell to his knees like a stone, his blood pooling on the floor like a dark shadow and the Mortal Sword shining, shining like a star, like a beacon, like the end of a world.

* * *

NOTES

In Nephilim culture, febrile is the colour referred to as ‘flame’ in the Colours Song (‘black for hunting through the night’, etc). It’s the colour worn to births, for ‘the washing away of sins’, and new beginnings. It’s also now the sort-of-family colour for the Sariel _agela_.

Geas is a word that means binding; in fantasy terms it’s sometimes used to mean the restrictions/compulsions placed on a magical object like a golem (think Asimov’s Laws of Robotics). Here it basically means that the golems have certain set responses/compulsions programmed into them for specific scenarios or contexts.

 _Teloah_ means ‘of death’ in Enochian, and can be used as a noun or an adjective. Simon’s using it as a noun when he calls the Inquisitor it.


	9. The Creatures in Cold Mirrors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, it's done! I really didn't mean for this one to take so long, lovelies, I'm sorry about that. But it's RIDICULOUSLY LONG, so at least it won't be over in a flash like the last few chapters were! And I've dropped lots and lots of clues for you. Let me know if any of you start to put the pieces together...
> 
>  **Trigger warnings** for dubious consent, bondage and orgasm denial. Also a warning for claustrophobia near the end of the chapter.

Years later, they would all remember this as the moment it all came apart. This delicately balanced, fragile edifice of spun-glass and wilful ignorance they’d all agreed to believe in, forged with hope and desperation, bloodstained and trembling, that had ever been a whisper and a wish from destruction—this was when it shattered. This moment was the Sword thrust straight through its heart.

Its death cries held them all frozen for a disbelieving heartbeat.

The Inquisitor recovered first. “You—” Her back was to Simon, but her head was canted down, she was staring at Jace on his knees, at the blood on his hands like a divine marker of guilt, and her voice was its own blade. “You—”

Imagine a dam breaking. Imagine the weight of a lake, a river, an ocean come crashing past a crumbling wall. Imagine an ocean come to end the world in salt and tears and blood. Its depth, its power, the incomprehensible size of so much water; do you see it? Do you _hear_ it, the rush, the roar, coming for you, coming for the realm? Do you feel the ice-cold spray on your cheek, glittering frost-like on your eyelashes, like diamonds burning, a breath before it sweeps away all you’ve ever imagined?

_Now drown._

Simon drowned. He was an ocean in a bottle and he shattered like glass and the waves, the black water howled forth, a tsunami breaking on crimson sands as the sky above screamed a song of war of death of apocalypse, world-murder and rage beyond words, beyond mortals. The windows blew in a storm of glass and power sheared through the table the floor the walls as Shadowhunters scrambled aside and he saw none of it, none of it, novae in his eyes bright as suns and the air around him desert-burned, burning, on fire with invisible flames that shimmered like silk and sun-struck water—

The world spun into place around his will, moved around him and abruptly he was standing between Jace and the Inquisitor and she was falling back, stumbling back from the shadows spreading behind him on the wall, a blizzard of wings curving like scimitars over the plaster, black as ink and fluid as fire. Simon, the thing wearing his skin, held out his—xyr—hand and Sielu leapt to it, and at xyr touch it shone, metal become solid starlight, burning off the stain of Jace’s blood in a blinding sear as xe swung it up and around to point at the Inquisitor’s throat.

 _:YOU WILL NOT TOUCH HIM.:_ Every word is a mountain, printed upon reality in gravity and magnetism, writ in holy stone, and xe sees the mortals quail and bleed from their ears at the brush of xyr voice and does not care, cannot comprehend caring. _:YOU WILL NOT HARM HIM. IT WILL NOT BE DONE.:_

And she falls to her knees with horror and wonder in her gaze, blood at her ears and eyes like a Madonna, whispering “Seraphim” like a prayer, and xyr face is pure and empty and implacable as death as the shadows on the wall, the shadows of _wings_ , come slicing down like guillotines—dozens of them, hundreds of them—aiming for the Inquisitor kneeling at xyr feet.

***

“Code red, I repeat, code red!” the captain barked over the headsets, as beside her Cas stared with blind eyes at the charm-pendant hovering between his hands, its golden rings spinning in a solid gold blur, the diamond at their centre burning white dwarf-bright. “It’s going nova, people, right fucking now, so prepare for Isis-damned lift-off and activate that circle!”

At her words, her operatives sprang into action, each of them exactly where they needed to be, knowing their places their words their parts down to the bone, synchronised as a dance troupe, moving like _agelai_ —

From a nearby rooftop a figure shot into the sky, twisting in a writhing blur of lapis-emerald, growing wings that cut across the autumn blue like lightning. Clouds gathered in its wake, thick grey cotton spun from its talons and the beats of those wings clapped thunder, so that the pedestrians below looked up incredulously at the sudden storm, the darkness curtaining the sun—and as rain began to hammer quicksilver upon them they scattered, clearing the streets—

A burnished fox dashed through the rain, the chalk line drawn by the stick in its mouth remaining stark and bright despite the falling water soaking the fox’s fur, tracing a boundary across the Institute steps—

Behind the Institute a young woman with coloured braids around her wrist spread her hands as she chanted quickly, an unnatural wind whipping her coat and damp-dark hair as she stood at the edge of a chalk line—

On the north curve of the Institute-spanning circle a man matched her stance, the rain repelled from his spelled glasses and the bow slung over his shoulder as he echoed the same words, the same ritual, standing at the edge of the same white line—

And the runes on Cas’ arms seared molten silver as he and the captain shouted with them, all of them crying a single word, the burning diamond in Cas’ hands a gold-caught star—

_“ALLAR!”_

***

The wings dissolved. Before their shard-sharp edges could touch the Inquisitor they vanished like shadows caught in sunlight, and the terrible, appalling light blazing beneath Simon’s skin went dark, a candle blown out by some unseen breath.

His brown-again eyes rolled up to the whites as the Mortal Sword fell from his fingers, and he crumpled like a shed skin.

The _agela_ lunged to catch him, ignoring the incandescent pain in their closest pair of hands, the honey-blaze of the star marked on Alec’s right palm—there was only Simon’s boneless weight, the vulnerable, terrifying way his body lolled in their arms, the dark blood coming from his nose, the corners of his eyes. They smeared more blood over his throat as they sought a pulse, a heartbeat, some sign that he was not—

Was not—

No—

_No no no no no **no!**_

They couldn’t find it, couldn’t, it wasn’t there and they shouldered the Inquisitor out of the way without thinking, hurling Izzy and Alec’s bodies across the room to drop down next to Jace’s, a hand on a stele and another pair ripping Simon’s _cóada_ open and they had an ocean of their own to call on, three souls made one surging through the slender crystal wand, wave after wave of cascading soulfire burning black against Simon’s skin, the whorls and knots of healing Marks scrolling like ashes across his chest and his eyes were blank and blind, only the whites visible as they stared unseeing at the ceiling—

_*Nonononono, don’t do this, don’t leave me like this, not like this, not now not yet, don’t, don’t, Raziel please Raziel please please don’t do this don’t do this I’ll do anything give anything just don’t take him let him live please please God please DON’T DO THIS!*_

The star on Alec’s palm was honey-fire beneath his glove, blazing-bliss all up his arm and Sariel kept flickering, Alec shuttering in and out, himself and them and back again, his blood turned to gold in his veins, frantic grief-terror-nono _no_ shredding Sariel apart and Simon’s chest was so still, so deathly still and the angel’s mark beating like a heart, like Simon’s heart cupped in Alec’s hand—

He ripped off his glove with his teeth and slammed his star-lit palm against Simon’s chest, hoping-wishing-praying-willing- _breathe—!_

And Simon gasped, arching like a bow; his eyes flashed to brown and he was convulsing, gulping air and coughing, choking, crimson flecking his lips and the corners of his mouth. In an instant Sariel turned him over and he was heaving, half on all fours and vomiting blood onto the floor, awful raw gushes of it, again and again until it looked as if someone had cut his throat, the pool of it was so wide and dark and the smears of scarlet on his neck where Sariel had sought a pulse—Simon was shaking like a leaf, half-crying, beads of blood caught on his eyelashes like garnets, gasping like he couldn’t get a breath and what was this, how did they fix this—

They didn’t have to; the blood stopped coming up, and for a few seconds Simon held his weight on trembling arms and panted, horrible, sobbing breaths—

And collapsed again. In Sariel’s tripled vision it was through Isabelle’s eyes that they saw Simon’s fall closed, saw his face go slack and his arms give way under him. Faster than any one alone they caught him before he could hit the bloodied floor, using Jace’s arms to bear him up and cradle him close, terrified, aghast, the stench of copper a miasma in the air and he was breathing, his heart was beating and yet, and yet—

“Take your hands off him!” The Inquisitor’s voice a cat o’ nine tails, and they’d forgotten her, they honestly had, turning to her with Simon’s blood soaking their knees, Simon’s blood and Jace’s married on the floor and the Mortal Sword cutting through it a silver brand, and if they’d been armed—

Thank the Angel they weren’t armed. The Inquisitor’s guards were hauling them up, hauling Alec and Izzy’s bodies to their feet and a pair of golems closed hard hands on Jace’s shoulders and their diamond mind was burning with terror for Simon, wild with it; the Inquisitor pulled Simon from Jace’s arms _(carefully, almost tenderly)_ and Sariel cried aloud as if she’d cut them down, unable to bear the loss; in that instant they would have cut down anyone between them and their _aikane_ if they’d only had their blades to hand—

The Inquisitor laid Simon gently on the broken table. His beautiful _cóada_ was ruined, black silk stained darker by blood, and his more-beautiful face was a horror, a nightmare of gore. But he was breathing now, they could see the rise and fall of his bared chest, and even as they watched the Inquisitor began drawing blood-replenishing runes with a quick, deft hand.

He was—not all right, but alive. Alive. And likely to remain so. This was no battlefield; they stood on hallowed ground, there were experienced adult Shadowhunters to take care of him. They weren’t going to lose him.

The relief was like the sky falling.

“You have no healer here with Starkweather gone, correct?” the Inquisitor demanded. Before anyone could answer—before Sariel could disentangle enough to speak, before their white-struck parents could gather themselves enough to respond—she stepped back and gestured towards the Shadowhunter restraining Isabelle. “Bellesword, quickly.”

The woman released her hold on Isabelle’s body—a golem immediately took her place—and strode over, drawing a quill-length stele from her belt. She bent over Simon as the Inquisitor beckoned the Lightwood parents. “Show Syr Bellesword to the Infirmary, and make sure she has access to any supplies she requests,” she ordered.

“Yes, Inquisitor.” Maryse bowed her head, her dark hair briefly obscuring cheeks gone seashell-pale. If she looked at Sariel, at Jace, then they didn’t see it and didn’t care.

“Inquisitor—” Sariel said, ready to beg if it would let them stay by Simon— _don’t take him away, he almost, I need to be near—_

“Be silent!” she snapped. She gestured sharply, and another of the golems bent to pick up the bloodied Mortal Sword. It pressed the cold hilt to Sariel’s forehead, and—

They jolted apart, scythed by ice. Alec sagged in the hold of the second guard, momentarily dizzy at being dropped back into his body, feeling his sense of self close up around him, severing what was one into three again.

His angel-marked palm was cool again, only skin. He closed his fingers over it, trembling.

“Go,” the Inquisitor was saying, and Syr Bellesword lifted Simon quickly but carefully, cradling him like a child in her arms, and swept from the room with Alec’s mother leading the way, holding the doors open for her—

And they were gone, with that last glimpse of Simon’s bloodied face catching in Alec’s throat like a stone as the Inquisitor turned blazing bronze eyes on them and snarled, _“You will explain.”_

“He’s possessed by an angel,” Isabelle said. There could be no hiding it now, not after that—the light that had near-blinded them all, the voice that had bled their ears and raked glass and fire through their brains. The shadow of those wings. There was no lie that could hold that truth and disguise it; the truth would burn any lie to ashes around it.

“We think,” Alec said, drawing the Inquisitor’s attention to himself, away from his sister. “We weren’t sure. But most of the pieces fit.” He held out his marked hand, as much as he was able with a golem holding his arms.

Her eyes widened at the gleam of crystalline silver. “ _Si_ _̱mádi angélou,”_ she breathed.

Alec swallowed. It had not occurred to him that she would recognise it—the last _si_ _̱mádi angélou_ had been bestowed on William Herondale two hundred years ago. Supposedly his descendants bore a matt, unsilvered version of the same mark, but it still wasn’t something most people were familiar with. “Whatever’s inside Simon gave it to me.” _And took something nameless in exchange…_  

The Inquisitor said nothing for a long, fraught moment. Alec could not begin to read the expression on her face, the kaleidoscope of disbelief and awe like something fragile, something new and precious.

Then it hardened. “And you kept this from me deliberately!” she hissed, a snowdrop swallowed up by ice, sheathed in razor edges. “An angel come to earth, and you hid it from the Clave! I should have you all buried, _agelae_ be damned!”

“It wasn’t our choice to make,” Jace said, and everything in Alec flinched as the Inquisitor’s gaze whipped to his _agelai_ -brother. “Simon didn’t want you to know—”

He did not fall, when the Inquisitor’s blow landed, but only because the golem grasping his arms was an immovable object; his head snapped aside under the force of it and Alec felt the granite-pain blossom in his own cheek, a blow of stone with all an adult Shadowhunter’s strength behind it—

And for an instant the pain was fire, reducing the swords of their souls to molten metal that surged into one blazing pool—

But the golem holding the Mortal Sword pressed its hilt against Alec’s forehead again and they exploded apart anew, and Izzy was thrashing in her captor’s hold, yelling, “It told you not to hurt him, you _athumos!”_ as Jace’s jaw rang like struck bronze, by some miracle unbroken, “You heard it, saw it, leave him _alone—!”_ and all Alec could see was the ring on the Inquisitor’s hand as she withdrew her arm, a pair of herons framing an elegant _H_ , a blaze of silver—

_No wonder she recognised the angel mark—she’s a Herondale herself—_

 The golem restraining Izzy shifted one of its hands to cover her mouth, reducing her fury to unintelligible mumbling, and her eyes spat sparks.

The Inquisitor had not glanced at her, and did not now. She had eyes only for Jace, and there was nothing conflicted or complicated about the revulsion with which she looked at him.

“You will not speak of protecting him,” she said softly, and even when Simon spoke of his father Alec had not heard such hatred from a human being before, from the mouth of anything but a demon. Her voice shook with it. “You Morgensterns— _lilim_ , every one of you! You disgust me—even I would not have dreamed that Valentine’s sons would sink so low as this, rutting like Lilith in the dirt—and to have somehow dragged an angel into your filth with you—I cannot imagine a greater blasphemy!”

Her loathing was a physical thing, a poison, a pressure, a punch—and Jace took it, swallowed it down acid-toxic so that Alec could feel it burning in his own throat, the absinthal tang of something desperate and terrified. It spread like venom, like a virus, fuelling some terrible transformation that Alec could _see_ as well as feel, crystallising softness into bitter salt in a flash, hardening Jace’s stance, his eyes, the smile he unsheathed cyanide-edged and gleaming.

“Oh, please,” he said, and Alec stared, stared and did not understand because he had not seen this mask of Jace’s since Simon tore through their lives, this drawling, mocking, smirking creature, cruel and beautiful as golden Lucifer and every bit as dangerous. “Simon’s no Morgenstern. He may have the blood, but the heart?” He made a sound of disgust, mouth twisting into a sneer. “He’s so strait-laced I had to break him open. No fun at all.”

And Alec was still reeling from the abrupt transition from one to three, couldn’t understand, couldn’t make sense of the new shape to Jace’s mind. “What are you—”

 “I forced him,” Jace said nonchalantly, ignoring Alec, ignoring Isabelle, half-lidded gaze fixed on the Inquisitor. “It was pathetically easy. He’s nothing like a real Shadowhunter, you know, he has no training, no sense of self-preservation. He had no idea he was in trouble until he couldn’t get out of it.” He smirked. “After the first few times, I even had him convinced he loved me. It’s been decidedly entertaining.”

“You…” The Inquisitor was speechless.

Alec was not. “Jace!” he cried, horrified. “That isn’t—”

“Don’t bother defending me, Alec,” Jace said lazily. “I know you’ve always tried so hard to see the good in me, but I’m tired of pretending to be a good boy.” He blinked cat-like at the Inquisitor. “They didn’t know, obviously,” he added, gesturing to his _agelai_ with his restrained hands.

 The Inquisitor frowned. Suspicion glinted in her eyes, but Alec barely noticed, couldn’t care, was staring at Jace and gaping, disbelieving, _*that’s not true it’s not true why would you say that Jace-other-myself tell her it’s not true!*_ “How is that possible?”

Jace smiled again, and his mind was—not a blank slate, but slippery, oiled glass and Alec couldn’t get a grip on him, only heard-felt whispers and fragments, a desperation like a drowning man clinging to a rope— “I haven’t fucked him since we bonded,” he said, razor blades in cotton candy and even Izzy was stunned silent, her mind a raw white shock against Alec’s. “We only became _agelai_ two days ago. Not quite long enough for them to learn all my dirty secrets.”

It flashed between them like a mirror signal, bright-white-final, Izzy and Alec both understanding in the same moment: Jace was trying to protect them. Them and Simon, taking all the blame for his own so Simon would be unstained when they dragged him to Alicante, so that as bad as it got it would not be worse. If they thought Simon was a victim, confused, abused, then—

But if they thought Jace was a—if they thought Jace had _raped_ —

 _*Don’t you dare say a word,*_ Jace sent, and his thoughts were steel, hard and sharp, a sword held to his own throat. _*Better one of us than all of us. If they lock us all up we’re done, but if you two are free…*_

 _*They’ll take you to the Silent City!*_ Izzy’s fear was as dark as the cells her protest conjured; Hodge had taken them to see the gaol reserved for Nephilim criminals, buried deep below the City of Bones, four years ago, and now memories of cold steel bars sprung up like forests, oubliettes reserved for Shadowhunters who broke their oaths, who turned their backs on Raziel. _*We can’t get you out of there!*_

And even if they could, where could they go? You couldn’t hide from the Clave. There was nowhere to run to, even if they could somehow get Jace out of the Silent City…

 _*I’m a pureblood Shadowhunter, part of the first_ agela _in a generation. And Simon will never testify. They won’t execute or exile me.*_ But Jace’s certainty was mist and sea-foam, dissolving into nothing when Alec tried to grasp it.

_*Jace—*_

“You, his _brother_ , the one who should have protected him above all else—” The Inquisitor said, and Alec had thought her repulsed before, had thought she hated Jace before, but now—he wanted to scream at her that it was a lie, of course it was a lie, his _agelai_ would die before hurting Simon, die before doing something like that to _anyone_ — “How could you?”

Jace didn’t flinch. “As I said,” he said softly, “it was easy.”

It was as if he’d struck her, returned her blow with interest; a shock like pain breaking across her face, hatred tempered by horror, and Jace was feeding her exactly what she’d wanted so badly—the unrepentantly evil Morgenstern heir, Valentine’s protégé—but Alec knew in that moment that she had not comprehended what that would really mean.

She didn’t know evil like Jace did.

But she recovered quickly, a portcullis of hard, revolted anger slamming down. “I will see you in Caïna for this,” she said, arctic, glacial. “I will see you spill the full treasury of your veins upon the ground for blood-price, _Morgenstern.”_ She spat the name like a slur, like poison, and gestured at the golem holding him.

When it started to drag him away—not even trying to let him keep his feet—Alec couldn’t hold back a protest. “His hands—Inquisitor, he needs an _iratze_ at least!”

She turned those ice-eyes on him. “The Silent Brothers will tend his injuries, which is more than he deserves.”

 _*Don’t defend me,*_ Jace ordered, grim and hard and the edges of him ragged and sharp as he was taken away. _*Don’t let her suspect anything. Be horrified, be disgusted, try and hate me—and keep Simon safe.*_

Everything was falling apart faster than Alec could hold it—gold turning to dust in his hands and blowing away, scattering beyond any hope of recovery. The golems were taking Jace away, the Mortal Sword held to his throat and ripping him out of Sariel like a heart from a chest and Alec and Isabelle screamed where no one else could hear, torn open and hollow, their shared soul shredded, in pieces—

And Alec didn’t know what to do, he always knew what to do but this time, this time—

_I’m supposed to protect you but how do I protect you from this, no no don’t take him don’t do this to us Jace! JACE!_

The doors closed behind his _agelai_ -brother, and Alec leaned heavily against the Shadowhunter man holding him in place, all the strength gone out of him, water poured uselessly into indifferent sand. His eyes burned, his throat stinging with arsenic-salt, with sulphur. As if he’d swallowed broken glass.

He couldn’t feel Jace at all. Even when Jace had held the Sword in his hands Alec and Izzy had been able to feel him, but now—

 _*Raziel, hear your children,*_ Izzy whispered, and numbly Alec let himself be coaxed into echoing her. _*Shelter your son in your wings, Sator—protect and guard him from the forces ’rayed against him…*_

A hand came down on Alec’s shoulder, and when he looked up he found the Inquisitor’s face looking back at him, her expression ever so slightly softened.

“I know this must be hard for you,” she said—if not kindly, then at least with a clear, astonishing note of sympathy. “No one wants to believe their _parabatai_ —never mind their _agelai_ —could be a—” She hesitated. “Could do such things,” she said finally. Evidently she could no more formulate the thought than Alec could, if for entirely different reasons.

“But this is much larger than your grief,” she continued. She looked to Isabelle, and the golem restraining her lowered its metal hand from her mouth. If she’d expected a response from Izzy, a word of thanks, she didn’t get it; Izzy only stared at her, her expression unreadable. “The truth must be freed, but I cannot do it alone. I need your help now. _Symeon_ needs your help. Will you give it?”

Silently, not knowing what else to do, they nodded, and Alec could not tell if either of them meant it.

***

_He is floating among the stars like a ghost, and the world is so beautiful._

_Simon stares at it, entranced. He has seen this image a thousand times—the blue, the green and gold and dusky brown, the rippled edges of continents, the serene silk of oceans—but he has never understood how BIG it all is. It is huge, enormous, bigger than ANYTHING—a perfectly imperfect sphere dancing for joy through the endless diamond-studded darkness, holding hands with its brothers and sisters as they fly through space together, skipping through stars, wearing moons and rings like jewellery._

_It is so beautiful it hurts, a happiness so sweet it is unbearable. Two tears fall from his eyes and tumble into the darkness, crystallising into constellations somewhere far below._

_(Below? Above? There is no up-and-down here.)_

_Suddenly something—everything—_ lurches _. Reality_ folds _—space compresses, crumpling up like fabric, a Big Bang in reverse. Behind it is empty whiteness like a sheet of paper, as if the universe is only wallpaper and this the plaster underneath, and Simon is too shocked to cry out as the bundle of gem-studded blackness shrinks faster and faster, crushes in on itself in a blur of light and silence and everything is whiteness as it—the universe, reality,_ everything _—falls into his hands like a jewel._

_But it is not a jewel. It’s a key._

_Simon looks up and the white room is not empty after all—he looks up and sees himself looking back, his reflection framed in the mirror from Renwicks, the mirror that once held Valentine’s Portal._

_But then his reflection blinks and his eyes open black as night above a grin like a scythe, and Simon’s hands are empty as Symeon lifts the key to his mouth and swallows it back like a shot of vodka and Simon shouts, “No!”, lunges for the mirror as if there’s any way to get it back—_

_At his touch the glass_ explodes _, a hundred thousand bolts of silvery lightning bursting from the mirror with a roar, throwing Simon back through empty white space. The shards fly around him like snow and where they land walls spring up, walls upon walls of rippled glass in every direction, closing around him, closing him in, and when he picks himself up off the floor he is surrounded by a thousand thousand reflections, and none of them are him._

_None of them are even human._

_They have claws and scales and fur, wings and tails and horns, stand on two legs or four or none, their skins are lavender azure ebony opalescent, they are aquatic draconic sylphic subterranean and everything in between, male and female and genders he has no words for, shapeshifters and creatures that are living gas and consciousnesses with three four five bodies apiece, they wear cloth or light or interlocking pieces of metal, they have flower blossoms growing from their bodies and tattoos on their lips, piercings of bone or ice or amber, their scales are engraved with pictograms and set with silver or their tails are braided with silk and feathers or their hides are marked with thin, delicate scars like art, carving the shapes of people, trees, constellations into their skins, and there are so many, countless, beautiful-impossible-terrifying, and they are all looking at him, seeing him, the weight of so much attention a crushing pressure—_

_“WHO ARE YOU?” he screams, and they scream with him—with mouths and hand-signs and trilling song, with slashing tail-gestures and searing colours flushing skins, with smoke signals hissed through three-rowed teeth and Morse code flashed from glowing eyes, with vibrations rung from harp-like growths and telepathy tearing out of the mirrors to slam into his mind in waves of pure, wordless emotion; he raises a warding hand and they move too, raising limbs or wings or fins as appropriate, curling into shells or spraying clouds of mist to hide their faces, the same meaning in a thousand thousand different gestures—_

_Mirroring him—_

_They are his reflections—_

_They are_ him _—_

_It is too much, too impossible, no way to comprehend it make it make sense; he breaks and runs, runs but there is only the glass, the mirrors, a labyrinth of reflections, and the masses of creatures run with him, run or fly or swim or slither, riding beams of light or twisting their bodies into wheels or outright teleporting but there, always there no matter how fast he runs._

_You cannot outrun yourself, after all._

_Your_ selves _._

***

As the golems escorted Jace out of the Silent Brothers’ carriage, the Mortal Sword still ice-cold against his neck, he felt someone watching him.

Not the golems that walked beside him, cutting him off from his _agelai_ and watchful for any escape attempts. Not the pair of Silent Brothers waiting at the angel statue that was the gate to their city. Someone—or something—else, other, a lick of flame between his shoulder blades.

He turned his head, trusting instincts bred into his caste for a thousand years—but saw no one. Nothing.

He stopped walking. The golems, not expecting his sudden stop, continued on for a pace, and for a brief second the Mortal Sword left his skin and Alec and Isabelle surged to meet him, a brief whirlwind of _relief-relief-fear-grief_ , knowledge and understanding exchanged faster than light, as fast as a thought—

_*Keep him-ours secret keep him safe, hide obscure disguise all you-me-we can, make her-our-enemy believe you-we-us are on her side—*_

And they were gone, snapped apart like a bone as the Sword came to rest against his throat once more.

 _“Continue onwards,”_ the golem not holding the Sword instructed, and Jace walked towards the Silent Brothers waiting to receive him without looking back.

The space where Alec and Izzy should have been inside him echoed, ached like a wound. He could not remember ever being so alone.

The earth shifted, opened, dropping away to reveal the stairs to the Silent City. He walked down them with the Sword at his neck and golems at his side, and let the darkness swallow him whole.

***

Isabelle held a mask of silk and porcelain before her face to hide her soul, and watched every move the Inquisitor made, committed her every word to memory. She was aware that she was studying the older woman like an enemy, like something to be hunted, and she didn’t care.

She had taken Jace away. She had _locked him up_. And the Angel only knew what Simon was going through right now—if he was even _alive_ —

No. Of course he was alive. Why would an angel bother possessing someone if doing so killed their host? Whatever their objective was, presumably they couldn’t accomplish it if their vessel died, or they would just possess the dead—it seemed like that would be easier. Less complicated.

She saw it each time she closed her eyes, the memory a piece of new amber embedded in her heart, wet and fragile and golden: the unearthly, celestial light streaming from Simon’s eyes, like staring into the sun. The wings on the wall, wings upon wings—swan wings and dragon wings and wings sharp and curved as sabres. The fire that had blazed beneath his skin, terrible, holy, recasting the shape of his face; incinerating every trace of humanity in the form it wore so that it was as if Simon had never existed at all, as if there had only ever been the celestial androgyne with a voice that shook the world….

Even with the disaster that had presaged it, even with the blood that had come after, there was a part of Izzy that was still blinded by the impossible glory of what she’d seen. Her Marks were still humming with it, like wind chimes still shivering-singing from the solar storm that had been unleashed upon them, that had caught them up; they felt pleasantly warm on her skin, as if they had absorbed some spark of holy fire like black paint absorbing sunlight.

But the awe did not make her stupid. If anything, she felt more protective of Simon’s secrets than she ever had before; when the Inquisitor asked her questions, she pared her answers down to slivers of truth, offering splinters shaved from the puzzle pieces and pretending they were the puzzle entire.

An angel. _A real angel_. And it had come to Simon, for whatever inscrutable, unknowable reason Celestials did anything. That meant something. It had not chosen to manifest itself in the centre of the Gard, the Nephilim house of parliament, and address the Clave directly; it had not lit one of the temples with heavenly fire to speak to the congregations; it had not even chosen for a vessel one of those Shadowhunters who lived entirely within the Law, who clung unhesitatingly to tradition. No, it had chosen _Simon_ , who was not obedient or traditional or religious, who despised the Clave and would never be Dedicated.

There had to be a reason for that. There had to be a reason it had hidden itself for so long, why it had chosen the one Nephilim as far from Alicante as you could get for its vessel. A reason that, when it had finally shown itself to a representative of the Clave, it had been to lay an injunction, not a benediction, upon her.

So Isabelle—and Alec—told the Inquisitor what they had to, and no more; about Abigor, and the seraphfire, and the _si_ _̱mádi angélou_. But no more than that. Not that Simon could move seraph blades, his own and others’; not that he could move Shadowhunters, too, through their Marks. They didn’t tell how Abigor had knelt to him, or that the touch of demons made Simon weep blood, or that he had a darkness in him, an other-self cast in negative where white was black and black was white.

The angel had not told her. They would not tell her either, and not only to protect Simon.

It was funny, Izzy thought, watching the Inquisitor write her report. Before all of this, she would have said that nothing could make Alec and Jace lie to their superiors. Jace hadn’t even lied about his feelings for Valentine, when their parents asked, and that would have been a marvellous time to bend the truth in half. But now?

 _We’re answering to a higher authority now,_ she thought coldly, and the thought was treason, and she did not care. Another power had entered the playing field, one as high above the Clave as a cherubim above the earth; she— _they_ —told their lies by Heaven’s will, and that superseded the Clave’s in a blaze of seraphfire and holy law.

But she considered herself acting under another authority, too, one she held deep and close, hidden even from herself; a sea serpent that showed itself in a flash of wave-jewelled scales for half an instant, before submerging with a flick of a powerful tail. A quiet but powerful thing, growing like a pearl in an oyster from a grain of sand, the speck of an idea, a whisper of thought.

A whisper that said: _there are forces greater even than Heaven, more worthy than angels of your loyalty, your honour. What Law is greater than that of friendship and family?_

A whisper that said: _the Clave’s Law would tear your family apart._

A whisper that said: _what gives them the **right?**_

It was a terrible thought, terrible and terrifying, an infernal blade thrust through the foundations of her world. So disturbing, so heinous, that she could not even look at the thought directly, could not acknowledge it.

But she was no longer alone in her mind, and Alec—heart-bruised, exhausted Alec, his angel-torn soul struggling to bear up against this new wound of losing Jace—caught a brief glimpse of the serpent as it vanished beneath the waves.

 _*That’s blasphemy,*_ he whispered. _*Blasphemy and treason both.*_

Izzy said nothing. She didn’t have to; he could feel her uncertainty, her confusion, her rage and hate and fear, as clearly as his own. And she could feel his, too, and guilt took the edge from her righteous anger because there was no rage in him, nothing hard or burning; if Izzy was frostfire then her brother was an ocean fog, salt and cold and thick, crushing exhaustion. She tried to help, to lift some of the plate armour weighing him down, but she wasn’t enough on her own.

For two nights Alec had been able to sleep— _really_ sleep, as he hadn’t since the angel marked his hand and took the price of it out of his soul. For two days, he’d been almost himself—stressed almost beyond bearing, but himself, because together, Izzy and Jace could patch the wound the angel had wrought, stitch it closed, however clumsily, however much it strained against their hold. Alec’s soul was ripped wide but between them Jace and Izzy had more than enough to share with him. In the two days since they’d bonded some of the pale fragility had already faded from Alec’s face, the dark circles under his eyes reduced to the faintest of shadows.

But now the stitches were fraying, popping, no matter how Izzy scrambled for them, clinging the edges shut with mental fingernails, and the Inquisitor was still asking them questions, sympathy laid over sharpness like gilt on steel.

 _*I’m fine,*_ Alec said softly, and Izzy felt him retreat from her, drawing a translucent curtain over his pain, his heavy, bone-deep weariness that was more in his mind than his body, a layering of lead around every thought—

 _*Lie reject-your-falsehood concern stubborn-male love-love-love,*_ she answered, discarding words in favour of weaving her heart around his, bolstering it, bracing it with a sister’s stubborn love—

It creaked, trembled, but by the _Angel_ she would _hold it_ —

The Inquisitor and Isabelle both looked up at the sound of footsteps in the corridor; Alec couldn’t find the energy to lift his head. A half-beat later there was a knock at the door.

“Enter,” the Inquisitor said crisply. They had adjourned to the Head’s study, the Inquisitor in the seat that just a few days previous had been Alec’s. Izzy was still trying not to resent the usurpation when the door opened.

“Inquisitor.” It was Maryse; she glanced briefly at her children, and then away. Contempt twisted in Izzy’s gut like a knife, shockingly sharp. “There’s a warlock downstairs. She says she needs to speak with you urgently.”

The Inquisitor frowned. “Of course. One moment.” She added a few more words to the report she was writing, produced her stele, and quickly sketched the fire-message _telesma_ , the one every Nephilim knew; a _saethu_ Mark and the runic name of the message’s addressee, interlocked like a solar eclipse. The paper dissolved in a quick flash of greenish flame as she pushed back from the desk and rose to her feet; Izzy wondered where the message would reappear, if she would recognise the addressee’s name if she knew it. “Lead the way.”

Izzy straightened in her chair. “Inquisitor, should we…?”

She did not quail as the Inquisitor flung a quick, piercing glance in her direction. “Please follow,” the Inquisitor said, after only a brief pause. “You two are more familiar with this canton than I, after all. I would welcome your assistance.”

There she went asking for their help again…

She wanted to squeeze Alec’s hand as they all made their way downstairs, but she didn’t quite dare, and had to settle for hugging him mind-to-mind instead. He’d said nothing, but she’d felt his spark of disappointment when their mother said ‘she’—when it was clear that this time, their warlock visitor wasn’t Magnus.

But it was someone they knew. As they followed the Inquisitor into the formal Receiving Room—escorted by one of the Inquisitor’s guards, the blond Asian man—even Alec felt a muted surprise when they found Arika _ashipu_ standing by the window.

“Warlock,” the Inquisitor said, stepping forward. “I am in charge here. You said you needed to speak with me?”

Arika ignored her entirely. Instead, fixing her serpentine eyes on Alec and Isabelle, she folded her arms behind her back and bowed. _“Viisaille viisauden,_ Alexander Sariel, Isabelle Sariel,” she said as she rose, making a fist, right hand over left, and placing it over her heart.

Too surprised to hesitate, they made the answering courtesies; touching their first and middle fingers to their brows, then gesturing a curve from left to right in front of them with an open hand, palm-up. _“Viisailta maailmalle,_ Arika _ashipu,”_ they chorused.

The other Shadowhunters—their mother, the Inquisitor, her guard—stared at them, all of them confused, all of them surprised.

“What is this?” the Inquisitor asked.

“This is how the wise greet each other, Shadowhunter.” The scales covering half of Arika’s skull and face were like jewels in a sword-hilt; beautiful, but beneath the ornamentation was something as deadly as it was beautiful. “I come as the Voice of the Spiral Court to tell you this: a werewolf child has been murdered.”

 _*No,*_ Alec whispered. _*No, no. Not again!*_

This time Izzy reached for his hand and squeezed, heedless of how it might look.

Besides, the others were all focussed on Arika. “When did this happen?” the Inquisitor demanded. “Where was the body found? Which pack did the child belong to?”

“The child died just after two this morning,” Arika said. “But I have no other answers for you.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have answers?” Maryse asked. “Where is the body? Where are the parents?”

Arika spread her hands. “The Court does not yet know.”

“Forgive me, Arika _ashipu,”_ Izzy said, choosing her words and tone carefully, “but if you don’t know where the body is, how do you know anyone died?”

For a moment, she thought she glimpsed an almost approving glint in Arika’s black-and-fire eyes—but it was gone before she could be sure. “That I will not tell you, Isabelle Sariel.”

“ ‘Will not’?” the Inquisitor echoed sharply. “You are bound by the Accords to aid Raziel’s agents in the pursuit of his justice, warlock. Refusing to give information we need—”

“If the Court deems that you need it, the Court will provide it,” Arika said, cutting her off. “Until then, trust our word. A werewolf child has been murdered. Do your jobs, Shadowhunters.”

She said this last with something of a sneer, and before anyone could react she swept out of the room, brushing past the Inquisitor as if the Clave’s strong left hand were of no consequence.

“I’ll see her out,” Alec said hurriedly, and ran after her, giving Izzy’s fingers a final squeeze before slipping away.

Give credit where credit was due; the Inquisitor did not hesitate long. “Syr Park, please gather the golems and meet us in the entrance hall in ten minutes. Leave one golem to assist Syr Bellesword and watch over Symeon.” The man dipped a shallow bow and left to fulfil her orders as the Inquisitor turned to Maryse. “I want to see all of this canton’s packhouses before nightfall.”

“I—I’m afraid I don’t know where they all are,” Maryse said, taken aback.

The Inquisitor’s eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”

“Alec knows,” Izzy said, surprising herself. It was true, but that was not why she’d said it. “He can show you.”

“Good.” The Inquisitor gave Maryse a cool look. “At least someone in this canton is paying attention to it.”

Maryse flushed, but said nothing.

“Syr Sariel,” it took Izzy a beat to realise the Inquisitor meant _her_ , “I would appreciate it if you would remain here.”

Izzy opened her mouth to protest—then thought of Simon upstairs. “Can I stay with Symeon?”

“I think that would be acceptable, yes. Only ask Syr Bellesword to alert me when he wakes.”

“I can do that,” Izzy said.

“Thank you.” Izzy started, but the Inquisitor was already moving towards the door. “Maryse, I expect you and your husband to be at the front door in six minutes. Do not make me wait.”

And she was gone, maybe to send another message to the Clave. Izzy started after her, wondering if Max was awake yet, if he’d want to sit with her at Simon’s bedside. Wondering if anyone had told him about Jace yet.

“Isabelle,” her mother said. “Thank you.”

Izzy paused with her hand on the door. “Mother,” she said after a beat, her heart thudding with something too cold and bitter to be anger, “I don’t want to hear it.”

She walked out without a backwards glance, and took the stairs two at a time as she made for Max’s room.

***

“How is Magnus?” Alec blurted the moment they were out of Shadowhunter earshot.

“He is not well,” Arika said. She looked sideways at him, her long legs devouring the distance to the front door as if she couldn’t wait to be out of the Institute. “He is very ill, Alexander Sariel. And likely to grow worse.”

“What?” Alec froze for a beat, aghast, but she didn’t stop walking and he had to break into a run to catch up with her. “What do you mean, he’s sick? I thought he was—he was grieving. Is grieving. Isn’t he?”

“Of course he is. All the Spiral grieves, but that is a wound time will mend, insofar as it is able.”

Alec had to fight past the thick heaviness in his head to process what he was hearing, had to claw for it. His bones had become lead again with Jace gone, and even _thinking_ was such effort, an immense, almost painful struggle—Sisyphus rolling his stone up a hellish hill, only to be forced to start over when it slipped through his fingers, again and again and _again_. “Are you saying time won’t mend this? He’s not going to get better?”

Arika walked in silence, her scale-adorned face unreadable for a handful of heartbeats. When she spoke again, he could hear how carefully she chose each word. “Death is the poison that sickens him, and only death can cure him.”

“What does that _mean?”_ Alec demanded, and the fog in him muffled everything, dulled everything, but even a dull blade can be pushed through a heart and the blunt, ungentle point went right through Alec’s chest. His sister felt it, he heard-felt her questions, her concern, but he could hear nothing but Arika’s words, _‘only death can cure him’_ — “Is he—are you saying—”

They had reached the front door. At a glance from Arika, Alec numbly waved his hand, and the door swung open in a chorus of unlocking locks.

“There are secrets here I cannot share,” Arika said. “But I can tell you this: Magnus’ fate is tied to these murders. Find the murderer, avert his working, and Magnus may yet survive.”

 _“May_ isn’t good enough,” Alec said quietly. The mourning runes on his arms and back throbbed like burns.

He tried to imagine having to draw the crimson Marks for Magnus, and couldn’t do it.

Arika stepped out onto the front steps. “Two children have been murdered. If two more are killed, the only cure for your lover will be a pure death. That is all I can tell you, Alexander Sariel.”

 _A pure death._ Some spark of recognition caught in his mind, smouldering on damp wood. He’d heard that phrase somewhere before…

He nodded shortly, his heart racing. “I understand.”

Arika nods back, and it looked like respect, but her fiery eyes were so hard to read. “Good.” She turned away from him and started down the stairs. Paused. “One more thing.” She pointed at something with the toe of her boot. “Someone is trying to bind you and yours.”

“What?” He came out on to the steps, and saw what she saw. The stairs were damp, as if it had been raining not long ago, but a crisp chalk line bisected the steps, clear and perfect. It was hard to see against the white stone of the stairs, but when he knelt to look closer… “A binding circle?”

“So it appears.” Arika stepped over the line and continued on. “Until we meet again, Alexander Sariel.”

“Yeah,” Alec muttered. He felt sick, and weary beyond words. Watching Arika walk away, he found himself wishing he could go up to his room and hide there, fall asleep and never wake up. He couldn’t begin to imagine what to do next; could hardly find the energy, or the will, to climb back to his feet. And now… Now, on top of everything else, Magnus’ life was on the line too.

He sat down heavily on the steps and put his head in his hands, trying to remind himself that this wasn’t real—this feeling of mental and emotional exhaustion, the sensation of being slowly, unstoppably calcified. The hatred he felt for this weakness was as irrational as despising himself for a broken arm—it was an injury, that was all. Angel-given, but it wasn’t _him_ ; this was not the truth of himself. And if it made the mere thought of the future an awful load to bear, he had to remember that this was not permanent. Trying to believe it, he told himself that he hadn’t always felt this way, no matter how hard it was to remember feeling normal. And—and it wouldn’t last forever. Catarina had said so. It was impossible to imagine, but logic and reason insisted that he would not always feel like this.

 _No,_ his weariness whispered. _It has always been this way. It will never end. The weight in your bones, the broken gears in your mind; they have always been here, and what could ever remove them? You are a small boat lost in the fog, and there is no point in even trying to row free, because there is nothing beyond the brume._

His sister was halfway across the Institute, but sitting on the wet stair Alec felt her presence as if she’d wrapped her arms around him.

A lump swelling in his throat, he reached back for her, clinging hard. _*I don’t know how to do this,*_ he confessed, too drained by bearing this wound on his soul to even cry. _*How am I supposed to do this? I can’t do this.*_

Magnus. Magnus could die.Could _die_. He was supposed to outlive Alec by centuries, by _millennia_ , not die of an illness before Alec could truly know him—

It didn’t feel real. It didn’t make _sense_. Silver burned werewolves and vampires; faeries never walked under the sun; and warlocks didn’t get sick, no more than Shadowhunters did. That was what made their immortality so sad, because the only end for them was a violent death, injury or accident or murder…

 _*Magnus isn’t going to die,*_ Izzy said firmly. _*Jace is not going to be banished. Simon…*_ He felt her flicker of dark amusement. _*I have no idea what constitutes his happy ending, but he’s going to get it.*_

 _*I’m not strong enough,*_ Alec whispered.

 _*Not alone, you’re not,*_ she agreed, pragmatic. _*But you’re not alone, are you?*_

Even the thick despair that had edged his heart since Simon’s angel tore him open could not deny that. Not when he could feel Izzy’s breath in his own lungs, the weight of her braid at his back, her pulse in sync with his own. Not with her strength there at their core, a reservoir of clear water under starlight.

 _*And you’re not alone with this, either,*_ she continued. _*It’s just like a hunt: we have to work together to get it done. So you? Are going to go with the Inquisitor, and show her the packhouses, and find out whose child is missing. And I’m going to trace the binding circle, make a sketch for you, and start researching what a ‘pure death’ might be.*_ She paused. _*We_ will _get through this, you know. Look how far we’ve come, how much we’ve already survived.*_ Memories unfolded between them; the Cup, Abbadon, Hodge’s betrayal, Jace’s rescue, the mark on Alec’s hand. The glory of the angel standing over Jace, ready to defend him with the Mortal Sword, wings outspread. _*We’re the first_ agela _in a generation, Alec!_ We can do this.*

And like magic, as if her words were a spell, the burned synapses in their shared soul suddenly came alight like an unexpected dawn breaking out of darkness, rays of warm gold piercing and scattering the heavy fog in Alec’s mind; he gasped, drawing his first full breath in what felt like years as the blade came away from Jace’s throat down in the dark and gave him back to them, their third, the completing piece of the tertian that was their soul-song—

**_*Our-us-by-another-name joy life you return JACE!*_ **

He surged to meet them, awash with the same exhilarating relief, the same bliss at being complete—a pleasure that was so intense-immense it superseded the physical, a sacred joy. Heart-to-heart they embraced, tumbling in and through each other, sharing memories of the past hour in stop-motion flashes. Alec and Izzy saw the steel and _adamas_ bars of Jace’s cell, the Marks etched into the walls—

But they were blurred, indistinct, the images smearing like wet paint the more Izzy and Alec reached for them.

 _*Did they medicate you?*_ Izzy asked, worried, and Alec echoed her concern, confused by the staticky quality to Jace’s thoughts. Even distance didn’t do this to a _parabatai_ bond, and every source agreed that a closed _agela_ bond was immeasurably stronger than that—

_*…mon…well…? …you…can…?*_

Jace’s frustration scorched, but it was tempered by a resignation his _agelai_ didn’t understand until the fourth or fifth time he sent a hazy snapshot of the runes Marking his cell.

 _*It’s the cell,*_ Alec realised, embarrassed it had taken him so long to understand. _*The runes—they’re blocking part of the bond. So he can’t talk to us.*_

Izzy’s amazement was frost blossoming on water; she hadn’t known that was possible. Alec hadn’t either, but it made sense. Of course they wouldn’t want Jace to talk to them—and of course they couldn’t hold the Mortal Sword to his skin every moment until his trial. The Sword was too precious for that. No doubt it was even now being returned to its place amongst the Silent Brothers.

Footsteps sounded behind Alec, and he looked around, reminded of his body, his physical location.

“Syr Sariel?” the Inquisitor said. She had changed into gear. She dressed _ilma_ -style, like Jace, prioritising speed and smarts over strength, only lightly armoured so as not to weigh herself down. Loose combat trousers tucked into dragon-hide boots, and above them her form-fitting jacket—also dragon leather—was zipped up to the throat, so its high collar would protect her neck. Her braid had been tucked into her coat. Across her back she carried a modified _naginata_ —a kind of Japanese polearm; instead of one blade hers had two, one at each end of the spear-like staff—and around her waist a _sephali lehare_ , a descendant of the Indian _urumi_ midwifed by the Iron Sisters in their citadel, gleamed like a belt of silver. Her bronze pendant, the sign of the Clave, rested on her chest. Against all the black, it shone like a new-minted coin. “Did your sister tell you?”

Alec rose to his feet, sending one last flare of reassurance to Jace. “She did. I’m sorry, I’ll go get changed.”

He hurried past her, his thoughts a flock of new-hatched butterflies, the heavy cocoon-casings discarded, burnt to ash by his _agelai_ ’s warmth, the charred remains pushed aside to make room for maps and schematics, an objective, a _plan_. They couldn’t talk, but it almost didn’t matter; Jace was here, with them, and between his light and Izzy’s fire… It was like walking all night through a dark forest, the sky storming come down and the wet, icy chill wrapped around his bones—only to stumble upon sanctuary, some place warm and dry, with friends waiting at the hearth.

It was like being able to breathe.

 _*Start with the_ Sepher Ha-Razim _,*_ he told Izzy as he raced to the weapons room. There was no time to go home for his own gears and weapons, but there were spares he could use. _*It’s shelved with the grimoires on the second floor.*_

He would take the Inquisitor to the packhouses. They would find out all they needed about the missing—murdered—child. And if Izzy couldn’t find a reference to ‘a pure death’, then they would search together when he got back, and when Simon woke up they would make a plan to help Jace, and Magnus _would not die._

Izzy was right; he was _agelai_ , and _agelai_ never surrendered, not to despair or exhaustion or unjust Laws. They could do this. They _would_ do this.

_(They had to.)_

***

Izzy waited until the others were gone, then hurried outside to copy the circle Arika had found.

The sketchpad she carried wasn’t hers; Clary had left it in Isabelle’s old room almost a week ago, and Izzy kept forgetting to return it. Holding it under her arm reminded her that Clary didn’t know what was going on, what had happened to Simon, and to Jace. Had anyone even thought to warn her that the Inquisitor was finally here?

She made a note to call her red-headed friend as soon as she could, put pencil to paper, and started walking the circle.

It extended around the entire building. The single line that crossed the Institute steps connected seven smaller circles, elegant knots of geometric shapes and sigils that meant nothing to Izzy, no matter how she wracked her brain. Each of these circles were banded with a seemingly random collection of numbers and letters, and everywhere she saw the equal-armed cross—it was repeated over and over, far more often than any other symbol, and that confused her, because she _knew_ that was not one of the signs they’d covered in class. It wasn’t used for summoning or binding demons—but then, presumably whoever had drawn this circle hadn’t been intending to trap a demon. How could there be demons in the Institute?

Which left only one possible conclusion. _It’s meant for Simon,_ she thought, chilled. _It must be._ Had one of the Inquisitor’s guards been sent to draw it, after Simon’s angel had nearly struck down the Inquisitor? Arika had called it a binding circle. Why would Shadowhunters want to bind an angel? How could they _dare?_

 _Because he’s dangerous. Or it is._ She remembered the angel’s wings, the sharp edges of them as they swung down for the Inquisitor. It would have cut her to pieces, if Simon’s body hadn’t suddenly given out.

 _Either the Inquisitor’s people drew this, or someone else did. Who else could it have been?_ Who else knew about Simon? Who could guess?

 _There were the werewolves_ , Izzy thought uneasily. The werewolf movers, who had seen Simon convulsing and weeping blood—seen him throw an adult werewolf into the wall. Izzy had warned them to keep quiet, but they might have told others. _In which case, there’s no telling who might have put the pieces together._ She didn’t know enough about angelic possession to tell if what the werewolves had seen were surefire signs of it; maybe someone who knew all about it would recognise it instantly from the descriptions of Simon’s fit.

 _And then the mysterious They tracked him to the Institute and drew a binding circle here?_ It seemed unlikely, illogical. And again, why would you want to bind an angel like that?

_To control it. To compel it. To make it do what you want._

Grimly, Izzy scuffed the chalk with her boot, deliberately smearing the circle she’d just finished copying. Dangerous it might be, but Simon’s angel had trusted her—and Jace, and Alec—with the secret of its presence, its very _existence_. She’d damn herself to Hell before betraying that trust.

Inquisitor or mysterious Other, no one was going to be binding Simon and his angel on her watch.

*

On her way up to the library, she detoured to stop by Max’s room. It was getting close to noon at this point, and her younger brother was probably still on Idrian time. He ought to be awake by now.

And sure enough, his cool voice answered when she knocked. “Come in.”

Izzy pushed open the door.

When Max was four, the Silent Brothers had conditionally confirmed him as _jääydin_. It was not quite a record— _jääydinae_ had been known to start presenting at 18 months—but it was impressive.

Isabelle had never got around to asking Clary if Light Worlders had _jääydinae_ too; she guessed that they probably didn’t. It was the blood of Raziel, Hodge had claimed, that created _jääydinae_ ; when the celestial blood was stronger than usual in a child, that child was _jääydin_ , with an angel’s ice and an angel’s fire inside them. Trained correctly, they became legendary Shadowhunters and great leaders, without exception; they could attend the Academy early, take their Marks at a younger age than others could bear, and once graduated they could choose their own assignments, pick their own cantons as they pleased. At 18 they were granted a seat on the Clave, if they wanted it, regardless of where they stood in their House’s line of inheritance; and _jääydinae_ were the first ones offered the places when Institutes became available. If they were more common than _parabatai_ , they were very nearly as highly prized: Max’s confirmation had come with a lavish party, and it had not just been for the Lightwood family. Officials from Alicante had come to the New York Institute, and the heads of important Houses, and for a little while the coldly barren place that had been Izzy’s home since birth had been warm and bright; for a day, it had been possible to forget that Izzy’s parents were _outcasten_ , that the Lightwood name was a pale ghost of what it had once been, with Makepeaces and Blackthorns congratulating Maryse and Robert on their son, and pressing gilt-wrapped gifts into Max’s four-year-old hands. Cousins Izzy had never met, and had not met since, had appeared out of the ether to claim a little reflected credit for the siring of a _jääydin_ of their bloodlines. Even Consul Dieudonne had come, the head of the entire Clave, to give little Max the traditional gift given to all _jääydinae_ : a key to the great doors of the Gard, the heart of Alicante where the Clave met to work the Law.

_‘For the day when you will join our ranks,’ he said, smiling at the small boy._

Max had accepted it—all of it—as his due. Jace and Izzy had found his autocratic attitude towards the fuss being made of him hilarious.

But they’d had to have lessons then, the Lightwoods, even Maryse and Robert; lessons in how to handle a _jääydin_. Because of course Max’s confirmation was only conditional; it happened, sometimes, that those born _jääydinae_ were _jääydin_ no longer by the time they reached adulthood. _Jääydinae_ children who were exposed too much to Ascended Shadowhunters or Nephilim of other castes, or who became _parabatai_ before the end of puberty, sometimes lost the Angel’s fire; they required special treatment, special training. You couldn’t treat them like other people, or expect them to act like other Shadowhunters. They were special. They were _jääydinae._

Which was why Izzy’s parents had allowed Max free rein to stock his room as his own personal armoury. Despite being only eight, Max had more weapons arranged on the walls and shelves than Jace had ever had—more sharp, deadly objects than any non- _jääydin_ eight-year-old would be allowed to even touch, never mind keep within easy reach. In the small spaces between swords forged for a child’s arm, there were books; codices and manuals and tracts, split near-evenly between the subjects of demonology and Shadow World politics. In the corner of the room stood a much-maimed practice dummy, and it was this that Max was focussed on as Izzy came in. He had a pair of _kunai_ throwing knives in his hands, and two more were already embedded in the dummy’s eyes.

“What do you want?” he asked without turning around. He threw the third dagger in a perfect snap; the blade didn’t spin, just flew like a bolt of black lightning into the red circle that marked a heart-shot. “I’m practising.”

“I can see that,” Izzy said, with only a touch of sarcasm. “I was wondering if you’d had breakfast yet. Everyone else is out or busy, so if you want anything cooked, you’re stuck with me.”

“I already ate.” The last knife sheared through the air into the dummy’s groin.

“Are you saying that because it’s true, or because it’s me?” Izzy asked, folding her arms over her chest, the drawing pad clutched in her fingers.

A flicker of amusement brushed Max’s mouth. “I had breakfast with the Inquisitor. She wanted to meet the Lightwood _jääydin_. We had an interesting discussion.” He walked over to the dummy to retrieve his blades.

Izzy leaned against the doorframe. “What did you think of her?” she asked, curious.

“She’s an idealist,” Max answered promptly. For a brief instant she glimpsed his contempt at the very idea, and then it was gone like a ghost. “Utterly irrational on the subject of Valentine or his sons, but otherwise of above-average intelligence. Probably a very good High Inquisitor; not someone to invite to a tea party.”

A bubble of laughter caught in Izzy’s throat, but after the events of the last hours, it refused to come out. “She arrested Jace. He’s been taken to the Silent City.”

For the first time, Max turned to face her, a rare bout of honest surprise on his young face. The key to the Gard hung from a gold chain around his neck, as it always did. “On what charges?”

She hesitated only a moment in telling him; it was hardly a secret anymore. “He and Simon have been sleeping together.”

Max paused. After only a brief second, his expression became sardonic. “This is a _lämieli_ thing,” he said, using the word that meant non- _jääydinae_. It was not a question.

“Which part?” Izzy asked, slightly warily, because that kind of statement usually required exacting clarification when you were talking to a _jääydin._

“Caring whom Jace has sex with. As if that has any relevance to anything of import.” Max shook his head before Izzy could respond. “I’m sorry. Please continue.”

“The Mortal Sword confirmed that he has no allegiance with his father,” Izzy said. “But _after_ the Sword, Jace claimed that the incest was non-consensual. That he’d forced Simon.”

Now Max frowned. “I take it by your mentioning that this claim was not Sword-sworn I am meant to infer that it is not in fact true. But why in Raziel’s name would he lie?” he asked, with honest puzzlement.

“To keep Simon from getting in trouble,” Izzy explained patiently. Self-sacrifice was not a concept most _jääydinae_ understood. “And us.” Shifting to hold the sketchpad under her arm, she reached up and drew down the flap of her _cóada_ , baring her new _parabatai_ Mark. “Jace, Alec and I—we’re _agelai_ now. _Agela_ Sariel.”

Max brightened. “Excellent! It’s about time. I—” About to say more, he suddenly paused, and frowned. “Although the reputational benefit of your bonding is somewhat undermined by the damage all this will do to _Jace’s_ reputation…” He sighed. “This is ridiculous. The moment Jace is brought to trial he will be made to testify under the Sword, and the charges will fall apart.”

“Not quite,” Izzy said. “They’ll know he lied about the rape, but the incest is still real.”

“So what? There is nothing they can realistically do to a pureblooded Shadowhunter of his calibre—particularly now you are all three _agelai_. The cost of punishing him is entirely outweighed by the benefits of keeping this _very_ quiet.”

At another time, Izzy might have smiled. “I don’t think the Clave are going to see it that way.”

Max made a sound of disgust. _“Lämieli,”_ he said, with real revulsion. Izzy knew better than to take it personally.

Her brother crossed the room and put his knives away. “I suppose it’s out of the question that they just become _parastathentes?_ But of course there’s no time for the _harpagmos,”_ he answered himself, before Izzy could. _“Parabatai_ , then. They can always change the Mark later.”

The Silent Brothers had coached Alec, Izzy and Jace on what to expect from _jääydinae_ , on how to react to their alien modes of thought and logic. It was important never to react with disgust, to remain calm and rational even when they said or did something completely outrageous. But Izzy had never felt the difference between herself and her youngest brother so strongly as she did in that moment.

“Max, I know this makes no sense to you, but trust me, no _lämiel_ would _ever_ agree to become _parabatai_ in these circumstances, for these reasons.”

He turned to stare at her. “It’s the most cost-effective solution,” he said, bewildered. “The Eros Statute is suspended within Marked bonds. There will still be some damage to Sariel’s reputation, of course, but if you continue to kill demons within your projected parameters, and if Jace and Simon become _parastathentes_ as soon as possible, that can be overcome—”

“This is another _lämieli_ thing, Max,” she said gently. “It’s a great idea. And—and I think we should at least suggest it to Jace and Simon, just in case. Maybe I’m wrong.” She knew Jace’s love for Simon was beyond anything she could have imagined, before the _parabatai_ bond had allowed her to feel it for herself; she knew that Jace probably _would_ consent to bond with Simon. He probably wouldn’t even hesitate.

But he _should_ hesitate. He shouldn’t enter into a bond with Simon _at all_. Not yet. Not so soon, if ever. And Simon—Simon couldn’t possibly understand what he was agreeing to, if he did agree.

“If the Clave are actually stupid enough to try executing Jace,” Max began—

“Then a bond is the best idea,” Izzy agreed. “But it’s a trump card idea. We shouldn’t play it unless we have no other choice. Do you understand?”

“No,” Max said wryly. “But I defer to your judgement where _lämieli_ are concerned.” He tilted his head, considering. “I do wish Jace could have been more circumspect,” he said, annoyed. “It was always going to be hard enough to repair the Lightwood name as it was, without this on top of it.”

“Wouldn’t want it to be too easy, would you?” Izzy asked. “Where’s the fun in that?”

He gave her a look, and this time she did laugh a little, unable to help herself.

“It really isn’t amusing,” he said, and Izzy grinned at him.

“It’s a _little_ funny.”                                                                     

He rolled his eyes. “So we have a _deus ex machina_ , should we need one. What are we going to do for Jace _now?”_

That sobered her, because she didn’t have an answer, did she? For all that she’d tried to reassure Alec, Izzy wasn’t sure what they _could_ do for Jace right now. When Simon woke up they could coordinate with him, but until the Inquisitor formally brought charges against Jace…

And even when she did, what then? The incest _was_ true, the Mortal Sword would confirm it—

“Max…” Izzy said softly, but he was talking over her, thinking aloud in what was the greatest sign of trust a _jääydin_ could give—

“It has to stay quiet—which means it must be done with quickly, all of it—the longer it goes on the more chance the damage to Jace’s reputation will be irreparable—and yours and Alec’s with it, there’s no way to distance ourselves from Jace now you’re _agelai,_ and even if we _could_ he’s too valuable to discard if there’s any chance of fixing this—hmm—but your value as _agelai_ ought to counteract the associations of Jace’s parentage—and _agelai_ are expected to have complicated love lives anyway, are they not? Perhaps the _agela_ exception to the Eros Statute would be enough to sway the Clave’s vote, even if it doesn’t strictly apply here—”

“Max!”

He stopped and looked at her. “What?”

“We don’t have any way to influence how the Clave will vote for Jace. We don’t even know if there really _will_ be a trial yet!”

“That’s true,” he said, his eyes coming alight. “Even if they’re too stupid to realise how unimportant this is, it would be in their best interests to settle it privately somehow, out of court. There’s always a chance the public would side with Sariel, if the case went before the Clave.”

Privately, Izzy thought this was another case of her _jääydin_ brother forgetting how irrational _lämieli_ could be, but she didn’t correct him. “Well, until we know the Inquisitor’s next move, I’m on assignment from Alec. If you don’t need breakfast, then I’m off to the library.” She glanced at his bookshelves. “Unless you have a copy of the _Sepher Ha-Razim_ up here?”

Max’s eyebrows rose. “Raziel’s book of spells? No. What do you want _that_ for?”

“Alec wanted me to look something up. Have you ever heard of a ‘pure death’?”

“Not that I can remember…” Max tilted his head. “How in the Angel’s name does an obscure magical term fit into all this?”

Izzy sighed. “You know what? Why don’t you come with me, and I’ll tell you everything while we look through the books?”

“Done,” Max said instantly. He moved across the room towards the door, pulling his stele from a pocket. “I bet this is going to be a good one.”

In the hallway, as Max drew a locking rune on his door, Izzy rallied her memories of the last month into some kind of order. “The first thing you need to know,” she said as they started towards the library, “is that Simon is possessed by an angel…”

***

_Simon ran._

_And ran._

_And kept on running._

_He ran until he was sick, until he was dizzy, until his vision blurred and the mirrors spun around him like carousels and comets. He ran until he could not distinguish up from down, left from right; ran until he could not tell the difference between his every step, every breath, and the echoes in the glass. He ran until the maze of mirrors ran too, ran like water or mercury around him, ran like the blood of some impossible, angel-strange creature, wounded, bleeding—_

He _is bleeding._

 _Veins opening like flowers in his arms, spilling gold that streaks behind him like wings as he runs, as he flies, as the ground/ceiling falls away and he is tumbling falling soaring into a whirlwind of reflections, millions of dazzling shards twisted into a star-storm around him, not faces now but vistas caught in the mirrors like worlds trapped in argent amber, mountains plains oceans cities, cities in the sky in treetops buried underground like Moria, cities of shell and stone and silk and selenite, cities that sing and cities that bleed and cities that are living beings in their own right, crystalline admanatine, silver and steel, towers of ice and towers of bone, turrets, spirals, domes, skyscrapers, minarets—they are snowflakes dancing in a blizzard of glass around him and every world he sees is dying, burning or drowning or dissolving into chalky dust in atomic winds. Castles in the sky plummet like falling stars and mountain cities crack asunder and those beneath the waves boil as lava comes gushing out from the sea-quakes knifing into their bedrock jagged as lightning in an endless montage of apocalypses,_ _Ragnaröks_ _flashing past sharp as memory sharp as grief sharp as guilt, round and round and round again and he can hear them, they are screaming, every one of them is_ screaming _as darkness spills across their reflections like blood like ink as they are swallowed up, torn apart, devoured by the demons he glimpses in every glass, swarms of them, plagues of them, as many as the grains of sand on all the beaches in every universe he does not know—_

_The fragments of mirrors stop their spinning, hang suspended like stars in their orbits, and for an instant there is a figure burning gold in the death throes of every landscape, bright as a spark in the devouring dark—here weeping, here laughing, here bent over the corpse cradled in its arms and here shrieking at the sky, licking blood from its lips or clasping forelimbs with two companions, here with a blade and here with a wand and here with blood-soaked hands spread open in welcome to Hell—_

_And then there are only the faces again, the reflections that are him and not-him, millions of them, and they all scream one word so loud he forgets his own name—_

REMEMBER

_—only to coalesce, every glint of silver flying together to form one mass as Simon falls from where he hangs, falls down through the white nothingness with the echo a mace in his skull and his wings of blood trailing behind him like comet-ribbons—_

_He smashes into the net of glass waiting somewhere between entropy and eternity, and it slices him to pieces._

_But he comes back together. And when he does, he’s inside a mirror—_ the _mirror—and standing on the other side of the glass, his smirk sharp and his eyes black, is Symeon._

***

Alec had been right: they found the explanation for Arika’s oblique riddle in the _Sepher Ha-Razim_.

It took Izzy and Max almost an hour to even _find_ the book, it was so deeply hidden in the shelves of esoteric texts. Simon had mentioned once that Light Worlders used something called the Lewey Secimal System to organise their libraries, but Izzy knew nothing about that. The Silent Brothers, it was said, had their own baroquely intricate methods for organising the records of the Nephilim, but no one she’d ever heard of organised their library by anything but personal whim. A smart Shadowhunter had particular shelves for particular subjects, so that you didn’t have to tear through cookbooks and family histories when you needed a demonology scroll in a hurry, but beyond that… What was the point?

Although she had a better idea of the answer to that question after hunting down this book of Raziel’s magic. _It’s all well and good to say ‘these are the shelves for spellbooks’, but when you have 14 bookcases of them and no idea what’s on what shelf…_

She made a note to talk to Simon about that Light Worlder system. If Light Worlders could _write_ such good books, maybe they could organise them well, too.

The _Sepher Ha-Razim_ was in Hebrew, of course, and Izzy sat down to read through it while Max made a stack of other likely texts. The book Raziel had given to Noah was less than a hundred pages long, full of spells and rituals to guard against demons in the days before Shadowhunters. Hodge had taught the Lightwood children that Noah was the name ancient Hebrews had given to a warlock of the time, one whose true identity had been lost; which explained both why he would have a book of magic and his 950 year lifespan. But as she turned the pages, Izzy found herself puzzling over that. Everyone knew that warlocks hoarded their knowledge like dragons hoarding jewels, ensuring that most true spellbooks were never glimpsed by the Children of Raziel; but the _Sepher Ha-Razim_ was not the only ancient book of magic to come down to the Nephilim. The Institute’s library had 14 bookcases full of spellbooks no warlock had ever claimed; the _Ghâyat al-Hakîm fi’l-sihr_ , the _Liber Juratus_ , the _Heptameron_. All predated Jonathan Shadowhunter, and none of them belonged to the warlocks—so who, she wondered for the first time, had they been written for? The fae?

 _Maybe Alec knows…_ She thought about asking him, but he was busy; she could feel his focus, banded with iron and skeletoned with steel. She didn’t disturb him.

She turned a page, and there it was, in a list of ritual phrases explained: _a pure death._

_‘As the ending of any self-aware creature is a stain on the face of the LORD—for even the gentlest of deaths leaves sorrow behind it—so there is the pure death, which honours the LORD: the striking down of the unrepentant murderer, and also the death of he who goes willingly into the arms of the LORD—for the one is justice unto the LORD, and the other is welcomed to the very foot of the Heavenly Throne…’_

“Why do you need this again?” Max asked when she read it aloud to herself, frowning over it.

“It’s something to do with the murders,” she said absently, thinking hard. She would not tell him about Alec and Magnus; that was not her secret to share. “Arika said that if the murderer kills two more children, the only way to undo what was being done would be a pure death.”

“Then you have to kill the murderer,” Max said, and Izzy made an impatient gesture.

“Yes, thank you, I’m not a complete idiot.”

He grinned at her. “You’re _lämieli_. Same difference.”

He ducked the pencil she threw at him.

“Do you have anything _useful_ to say?” she demanded.

He paused to consider this. “Not at this time.”

“Jackalope.”

“Hydra.”

“Pixie.”

“Chimera.”

“What’s with the multiple-head theme there, Jackie?”

“Don’t call me that.” He looked down at the book in front of him. Even when she peeked, she couldn’t figure out what language she was looking at. “ _Lämieli_ —talking to you is like trying to kill a hydra,” he said after a long moment. “There are so many heads, and if you cut one off another just grows back. It’s exhausting.”

Isabelle said nothing as she parsed this. “Max,” she said slowly, “did you kill anyone in Alicante?”

He gave her an annoyed look. “Of course I didn’t!”

“Not even the most annoying _lämieli?”_

“No.” He turned back to his book. “Mother and Father are the worst,” he said after a beat. “They’re so _irrational_. You, Alec, Jace—I can talk to you like reasonable people. But them—!” He pushed his hands into his hair. “I can’t wait until I can go to the Academy next year. I can’t wait to _leave.”_

Izzy didn’t know what to say. Of course Max was looking forward to the Academy, where he would be free to be himself and his _jääydinae_ traits would be, not a source of interpersonal friction, but weapons in an arsenal that would catapult him to the top of his classes. But she would still be sad to see him go.

“We’ll miss you when you’re gone,” she said, fixing her gaze on the book in front of her. “Just so you know.”

“I know,” he said quickly. But he didn’t say it back, and she knew better than to expect it.

“Well, that’s one quest-object down,” she said briskly. She drew out Clary’s sketchpad and flipped to the drawing of the circle. “Let’s find this one next.”

“What on earth,” Max began, coming over to look at it, but Izzy never heard the rest because very suddenly, two terrifying things happened at once:

Fear bloomed black and toxic petals in Jace’s heart—

And upstairs, Simon woke up.

***

_“Do you know who you are yet?” Symeon asks._

_Simon stares at him. “I know I’m not you,” he says, with more confidence than he feels. It would be more accurate to say, he doesn’t_ want _to be the boy on the other side of the mirror. He_ refuses _to be his reflection._

 _“Then you know nothing.” Symeon’s smile twists, a broken helix, corrupted DNA, and_ corrupted _is just the word for him, this anti-Simon with his obsidian eyes and the plethora of Marks writhing over his skin like demonic script, for all that the runes are supposed to belong to the side of the angels. They share a face and scars, but they are not the same, no matter the implications of Symeon’s contempt. Simon has to believe that. “Mirrors don’t lie, little singer. There you are, and here I am. Two sides of the same coin.”_

_He puts his hands together. When he parts them, there’s a coin resting on his palm. He flips it up into the air, and it turns over and over, one side bright gold, the other flashing cool silver. He catches it, turns it over, slaps it down on the back of his hand and glances at Simon with a grin. “Heads or tails?”_

_Simon shakes his head. “I’m not going to play with you.”_

_“How dull.” The coin is gone, and so is Symeon’s smile, but his eyes glitter like blue goldstone. “You’re trying so hard to be good, aren’t you? Don’t think about it. Don’t feel it. Don’t_ want _it.” He smirks, and it’s honey dripping from a razor, a sweetness that cuts. “How’s that working for you?”_

_“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Simon whispers, cold, and his twin’s smirk grows wider, sharper._

_“No? Then let me show you.”_

_The world inside the mirror melts, blurs, dissolves like candy floss in the rain. Beneath it is something else, another picture, a different scene, one that slides into Simon’s gut like a knife of molten metal and his breath is gone like a thing that never was, because—_

_Because. Because_ Jace _._

 _He is naked, and he is kneeling on the floor, in a room that curves around him like the setting about a gem. And he is a jewel, Jace, a work of art, an artist could spend a lifetime striving to capture some fragment of his beauty and never do him justice—he is gold, a golden blade with an edge like steel, like_ adamas _, and every line of him is so perfect it hurts to look at. His shoulders almost beg for wings to complete his glory; his hand wants a sword of fire._

_But now he is kneeling at Simon’s feet, a Celestial humbled, brought low, and when Simon slides his hand into Jace’s hair—unthinking, unresisting, unable to even think of resisting this treasure laid before him—Jace shudders full-bodied, pressing into his touch like a lotus twisting into the sun. Simon tightens his grip and Jace moans, velvet and smoke, and when Simon tips his head back he looks up at Simon as if into the face of God._

_And. He._

_He is covered in Marks. It is a fist around Simon’s neck, a burst of magma in the pit of his stomach, the surfeit of runes scattered over Jace’s face, his neck, tumbling like black jewels down his arms and chest. They are tiny beads of jet blinking on his eyelids, droplets of ink on his lips, ebony curlicues gracing his cheekbones and jaw; they spill in graceful profusion along the lines of his bones, his joints, a waterfall of onyx and black pearl that grace his hands like rings, kiss his hips, his thighs, his knees. A collar of calligraphic sigils encircles his throat, and when he parts his Mark-kissed lips to pant Simon catches a glimpse of a curl of ebony on his tongue and goes up in flames—_

_Because he knows, doesn’t he, knows exactly what each Mark means, what they mean in this quantity, this oh-so-deliberate placement—_ mine _, they mean_ mine _, his name his claim tattooed over and over on Jace, branded to the bone for all to see, and it should be horrifying, terrifying but instead there’s only the rich satisfaction of sated possessiveness, dark and pleased, the rise of ignited desire, hunger, Jace is so fucking pretty on his knees—_

 _Simon pushes Jace’s legs apart by the Marks on his thighs and Jace whimpers, shivering, his eyes bronze-dark as they stare up at Simon, and even his cock is jewelled with small, delicate runes, runes of arousal and denial and without thinking Simon strokes his power through them, watches Jace’s lips part around a moan, feels him shudder in his exoskeleton of Marks; Simon’s puppet, Simon’s toy and they both know it. Simon pulls on the collar and Jace sways forward, his face desperate, pleading for—something, more or none, possession or freedom, his wrists locked behind his back and Simon opens Jace’s lips, gently but irresistibly, pulls him in and Jace groans, pants hotly against Simon’s crotch, shivering, trembling, and the sheer rush of just_ holding _him, holding every inch of Jace’s body in the palm of his hand, the grip of his power, the certainty that he can make Jace do_ anything _—_

 _His clothes fade away like afterthoughts and Jace’s eyes flutter closed as the head of Simon’s cock slips into his mouth, just a little, and Jace’s groan almost sounds like pain, like bliss as Simon pulls his whole body closer, makes him—_ makes him _—take Simon deeper, take him in, his mouth like blood-warm silk and Simon fists both hands in Jace’s hair, flicks Jace’s eyelids open because Simon wants to see him, take him, give him nowhere to hide. Jace looks drugged and Simon pushes his leg between Jace’s thighs, pulls at the Marks on his hips and makes Jace thrust, makes him rut up against Simon’s leg and the sound he makes is muffled by Simon’s cock and that, that—_

 _Simon wants to tear him_ apart _—_

_Instead he strokes heat through Jace’s runes and thrusts hard when he moans, drags him closer by runes and hair until he’s sliding into Jace’s throat, and Jace is letting him, can’t stop him, grinding his cock against Simon’s calf with frantic whimpers, pupils blown wide open and spit gleaming on his Marked-up lips—_

_Until Simon pushes him off, a flicker of will knocking Jace back with a wet sound as he comes off Simon’s cock, and space spins, he falls back not onto the floor but a bed and Simon follows him down, mouths crashing together like swords—Jace surges up into him, hands freed and come up to touch him, grab him, calluses catching on Simon’s skin and that Marked tongue touching his with a shock like lightning searing down his spine; he catches that feeling and shoves it outward, slams Jace down and purrs into Jace’s shocked gasp, pinning Jace’s wrists above his head, wrists elbows shoulders, torso hips thighs knees ankles pinned right where he wants them and Jace’s mouth opens for him as he licks into it, as he rolls his hips and their cocks slide together, Simon spit-slick and Jace wet as a girl, furnace-hot against him, Simon can feel him throbbing through the Marks there, can taste the sounds he’s making, soft fractured noises, fracturing—_

_He doesn’t need his hands, just spreads his knees to cage Jace’s hips and bows his spine, pulls Jace’s hips up like pulling on puppet-strings, holds his cock right where Simon wants it as he laps at the corner of Jace’s mouth, smug and pleased, Jace panting so hard and his breath just_ breaks _as Simon slides down on him, a cracked wail clawing out of his throat as Simon takes him in like a toy and holds Jace there, hips locked, body locked and trembling, shaking, unable to twitch or blink without permission that Simon doesn’t give, oh no, not now, rolling his hips to drink Jace down and savouring the desperation in eyes he doesn’t let close, in knuckles that can’t curl into fists. He chokes Jace’s cry in his throat before it’s born and holds him statue-still, forcing him to just take it and_ feel _as Simon takes all of him, inch by inch, sliding full in a spiced-honey burn, a languid, rich bliss. Only Simon knows how much Jace fights it, fights_ him _; only he can feel it, the fierce, frantic struggling of a mouse caught by a serpent, so easily, deliciously subdued, a pleasure a thousand times greater than anything physical. There is a scream building in Jace’s eyes, sweet as sugar, sweet as sin; his body is a cage and Simon is the one who’s caged him, collared him, claimed him; Simon is the one who rears back and rides him, fucks himself on Jace’s cock as if his lover, his_ pet _is just a living dildo, just a toy, his very body Marked for Simon’s pleasure, and Jace would be crying out if Simon let him, would be crying, every inch of him taut with need made sweetest agony, need made unbearable but Simon makes him bear it, makes him and makes him—_

_His orgasm sweeps him under in a rush, so blinding-burning-terrible-good he sees stars, a hail of dazzling mirror-shards reflecting icy light. But it’s almost an afterthought, almost unimportant; it’s when he climbs off Jace to kiss the sweat from his throat that he feels satisfied—when he lets go of (almost) every runic chain and Jace curls into him, shaking, still delirious with desire—when he whispers a denial to Jace’s pleas for relief and licks the subsequent tears from his lover’s lashes, holding him as he sobs—_

‘How’s that working for you?’

_—that’s when he feels sated, complete. Whole, with Jace broken in his arms._

_He purrs, and drapes a dark wing over his pet like a blanket, holding him like an ember in ebony, holding him like a breath…_

_It’s so good. It lasts so long, endlessly; he drifts on bliss, glutted with pleasure, for what seems like eons. And maybe it is—but. But, but. After an endless while the sweetness of Jace’s tears begins to leave a bitter aftertaste on Simon’s lips, like poisoned sugar. It turns to asphodel and wormwood on his tongue, and before he can understand it Jace melts away, turns to smoke in Simon’s embrace._

_His enraged roar shakes this mirror-world to its foundations; he whips up and around, night-sky wings flaring wide, bristling with bladed primaries._ “Where is he?” _he snarls, and Symeon is pale as milk in the mirror, his black eyes gone wide; in the glass his wings are gold, sunbeams woven into feathers and set alight._

 _“Something’s wrong—in the_ caos _—”_

 _It’s a word that means_ tangibility _, the realm which is physical and touchable; flesh and blood, stone and sea, not this place of dreams and visions but reality as mortals know it, and when Simon puts his hand on the glass Symeon mirrors him like a good little reflection (for once, for maybe the only time). Light bursts from the touch of their palms, silver moon’s light and blazing solar gold and Symeon’s coin is spinning heavenward, turning over and over, heads over gleaming tails as it flips and falls—_

And he opened his eyes.

***

It was like being in an oubliette.

Not that it _was_ an oubliette. It wasn’t. But they had marched Jace past the oubliettes on the way to his cell, the impossibly deep pits reserved for Shadowhunters who betrayed the Angel, and the thought of them was firmly embedded in Jace’s mind. No one had even bothered to place bars at the mouth of each shaft, because no one, not even a pureblooded Shadowhunter, could climb their way up the _adamas_ -lined walls, as smooth and slick as oiled glass. If you were swallowed by an oubliette of the Silent City, you were never coming out again.

He wondered if anyone ever accidentally fell into one. It was hard to imagine a Silent Brother tripping, but they did wear those ridiculous robes, and if you weren’t going to place manhole covers over pits like that you really only had yourself to blame if you fell in.

They had not put him in an oubliette. But the cell was so completely, unrelentingly dark that they might as well have done. The torches carried by the Silent Brothers had illuminated a stone box of a room, with unfamiliar Marks carved into every surface; when they healed his hands and locked him in, the light had licked over a wall of bars each as thick as Jace’s wrist. But now those things were just a memory, because even Shadowhunter eyes were struck blind by this darkness.

There was a manacle around his right wrist, chaining him to the wall. He could feel the weight of it, still; could touch it, run his fingers over the steel and be certain it was not just a memory.

Or thought he could he certain. Maybe he couldn’t be. Maybe the Silent Brothers had done something to his mind, and none of this was real. Maybe they _had_ put him in an oubliette to rot, and the manacle was only a fantasy, something his mind had conjured up because the reality was too terrifying to face: that he had been abandoned here, out of reach of his _agela_ and Simon, to rot, to go mad and die in the dark without ever seeing any of them again—

He tangled his fingers in the chain of his manacle. _Stop._ This was ridiculous. He was not going to _die_. The Inquisitor couldn’t just—leave him here, without any kind of trial—

_Why not? They all heard you say it with the Sword in your hands. ‘I’m sleeping with my brother.’ Not exactly open to interpretation, is it? And it’s clear she hates you. Probably someone she loved died in the Uprising—maybe someone Father killed himself, that would explain a lot—_

_And if that’s the case, she’s probably happy to leave you down here, trial or no trial._

_You’re going to die here._

Die in the dark, alone, unable even to truly reach his _agelai_ —by the Angel, his death would destroy them, a third of their soul torn away, he should never have agreed to bond with either of them—and Simon, oh, Raziel, who would tell him?

 _What does it matter?_ A voice whispered. _You saw how he bled, how he fell after the angel was done with him. No one’s going to be telling him anything. He went too far this time, he’ll never wake up—he’s probably already dead, and Alec and Izzy can’t tell you because the cell is censoring your bond…_

 _Oh, so I’m in a cell now?_ Jace thought at himself. He wanted to be annoyed with the thick, cloying fear tangled around his throat, knotting razor-wire around his heart. This wasn’t like him, he knew it wasn’t—these fears were illogical: Simon’s angel _needed_ a vessel or it wouldn’t have taken one, it would not kill Simon at least until its goal, whatever it was, had been met. And the Inquisitor would not break the Law to leave him here. Too many people knew where he was for her to get away with it even if she had wanted to.

But none of that seemed to matter. In the quiet his breathing was loud, his breaths coming quick and harsh as he wrestled with outright panic. Logic warred with irrational certainty and was losing, hard and fast. The darkness of the cell was smothering, lethal and he found himself on his feet with no memory of getting up. He had to get out, he had to get out of here, but he couldn’t _see_ and what if the floor was gone, what if when he took a step he fell forever into the dark—

_Then you’ll hang from the wall, because you’re still chained to it!_

Before he could make himself move, a cry cut through the darkness like a sword, shearing through his heart like a vampire’s kiss. Jace froze, forgetting how to breathe as the sound continued, on and on and _on_ , spilling into echoes that beat against the walls like fists, beat against Jace’ skull like blows from a mace: a high, wretched wail, stretching higher and higher until his every cell was drawn taut with waiting for it to break, waiting for it to shatter apart—

_It’s not real it’s not real you’re hearing things, your mind is playing tricks on you—_

His whole body jerked as the wailing was cut off, as suddenly as the fall of a guillotine—but before the echoes had died away another scream rose up out of the dark, and another, and another, a cacophony of inhuman terror that sent Jace staggering back against the far wall, as far from the bars as he could get; the sounds pierced his head like nails hammered through the bone and turned his blood to ice, to mercury. He couldn’t count the voices now, couldn’t tell how many were real and how many reflections cast by the Silent City’s tunnels and caverns—but it was so many, too many, this was what Hell must sound like, thousands upon thousands of souls _screaming_ —

Like the word of God, light. Jace blinked, his eyes dazzled by the sudden onslaught of sight; it took him a moment to process the dance of firelight on the walls of the corridor outside his cell, the burning torch clasped tight in a Silent Brother’s hand. But almost instantly Jace wished for blindness again, because this was no serene bastion of unimpeachable power; the Brother staggered as he walked, his hood torn away to bare a rictus of horror, the face of a man terrified beyond mortal understanding. His lips bled, the stitches that had once sewn shut his mouth torn free, and even as Jace saw the blood he understood who it was that was screaming: the Silent Brothers, driven by a fear stronger than the Rune of Silence that bound them, tearing themselves apart to make such noise—

_What fear could pierce their silence—?_

The Silent Brother, shaking, stumbling, tripped on his robes, just as Jace had been imagining earlier. He fell forward onto the stone floor and did not get up again.

Jace did not, could not make a sound.

The torch rolled away from the Brother’s outflung hand, still burning, its light casting dancing shadows over the walls, and Jace knew he should reach for it but he could not. He knew he should call for help, but he could not, could not even open his mouth as the Silent City rang with the screams of men who had not spoken, not laughed, not even whispered for centuries.

No one would hear him anyway—even Alec and Isabelle could not hear him now—

_Simon, I’m sorry, sorry for everything…_

Gradually, the cries died away—literally died away, Jace thought, unable to conceive of what could be killing the Silent Brothers in their own stronghold but unable to deny it, either. Silence fell, and that was _worse_ , it pressed down on him until he was sure he would go mad from the pressure of it, from the certainty that whatever monster had gotten into the City was _still here_ —he almost thought he could hear it, a heavy, dragging slither against the stones, like the movement of an enormous serpent writhing its way through the tunnels. His mind flashed to the basilisk in the second _Harry Potter_ film and hysteria clawed at his throat, at the space behind his eyes and he could tell himself he was imagining it all he wanted but down deep he knew otherwise, _knew it_ with the same sense that recognised demons and Downworlders and danger. He pressed shaking hands over his mouth to keep in the scream building behind his teeth and tried to believe that he heard no whispering, no sick, voiceless murmuring like a stranger scratching at the door, a sound somehow worse than the quiet, worse than anything, it beat like a second heart in his chest, a cold, tarnished heart—

At the edge of the torch’s flickering light, something moved. The shadows rippled, shifted like water, and Jace quailed back into the corner without thinking, beyond thinking, his mind seared blind by fear like an eye staring into the sun—

He glimpsed, so quickly he might only have imagined it, a pair of eyes like icy jewels—

A door a little way down the corridor opened, and swift as a magic trick the fear was gone, the weight lifted so suddenly from Jace’s chest that he gasped as much in shock as relief—warmth flooded back into his frozen veins, air flowed into his fossilised lungs, and not even the appearance of his father in the doorway could undo the sense of reprieve, of execution stayed—

“Janim?” Valentine’s face was writ clear with surprise. The witchlight in his hand shone like a star as he entered the corridor, walking towards Jace’s cell without heed for the Silent Brother’s corpse on the floor. “What are you doing here? Are you hurt?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Jace parried. He straightened up as the witchlight’s illumination fell on him. His pulse was still racing. “What was that thing?”

Valentine considered him. He was, Jace realised belatedly, in full battle dress. There was no uniform for Shadowhunters; they tailored their gear to their own martial styles, which was why Alec wore more armour than Jace did—he was stronger, where Jace depended on his speed, on being lighter and quicker than anything he fought. Valentine—Jace’s father was clothed head to toe in supple black dragon-leather, armour which would turn most demonic claws and venom while allowing a gymnast’s range of movement. The hilt of a sword protruded over his shoulder, strapped to his back, and bracers of Marked electrum bound his forearms and calves. “The Silent Brothers had something I needed.”

Something of his earlier chill came back to Jace then; frost’s fangs, the sharp points lying gentle against his skin. “You did this. You killed them.”

Valentine inclined his head, not so much agreement as acknowledgement.

“Why?” Jace did not expect an honest answer, but he needed one. He pushed himself to stand, needing to face his father on his feet.

“They had something I needed,” Valentine repeated.

“A sense of decency? But no, you’ve never needed one of those—”

A flicker of annoyance crossed Valentine’s features. “This.” In a single, beautifully fluid motion he drew the sword from over his shoulder—no, the Sword, Jace recognised it in a single appalled instant even before his father named it, “Sielu. The Soul Sword.”

“Someone likes their alliteration, don’t they?” The taunt came from his mouth fully-formed, without thought; all of Jace’s attention was locked on the sight of the Mortal Sword in his father’s hand. There was no sign now that his blood had ever marked the blade, but he could not fail to recognise the shape of the hilt, the pair of sweeping wings.

“Who put you here, Jace?” Valentine asked again.

Jace made himself meet his father’s eyes. “Why? Are you going to kill them, too?”

Valentine’s gaze was cold, and for an instant Jace was reminded of those other eyes he’d seen, eyes like burning ice. “Do you think you deserve this, then? Were they right to punish you?”

Jace’s answer caught in his throat.

“There is a sickness at the heart of our people, Janim,” Valentine said. “Deep down, I think you know this. You should not be here, locked in a cell like a criminal. It is a symptom of a greater ill.”

“How do you know I don’t deserve it?” Jace challenged him. His voice was raw. “You’ve been away for a while, father. There’s no telling what I’ve been up to.”

Valentine just looked at him. “I know,” he said, “because you are my son.”

The ground dropped out of the world.

“I am proud of you, Janim,” he continued, seemingly unaware of how he’d stolen Jace’s voice with a word. “Seeing you here, how they’ve treated you, and yet your loyalty to them is unflinching—it may be misguided loyalty, but that is my fault, not yours, for leaving you with them in the first place. I should never have done that. I should have kept you with me. If I had, you would understand…”

Jace shook his head, snatched back his power of reason even past the words looped like a ring around his heart; _I am proud of you. I am proud._ “There’s nothing to understand. You killed my grandparents, you kept my mother a prisoner… My twin is dead because of what you did! You slew other Shadowhunters to further your own ends—you, who taught me that it was the worst of crimes. You did that!”

“I did. But Janim, that is only half the story. When you were a child you were too young to understand, and now that you are old enough for the truth…”

Jace’s mouth was dry. His father looked almost sorrowful, as if he genuinely regretted the decisions that had brought them here, brought them to this, father and son on opposing sides of the line. He wanted so badly to ask for the truth—wanted so badly for there to _be_ a truth, some mystery that would cast light on all of his confusion, make sense of the father he’d thought he’d known and the murderer, the war-criminal, the impossibility that they could be the same man.

 _Simon would know better than to ask,_ a voice in him whispered.

He dropped his gaze. “You can’t take the Sword,” he said instead, quietly.

Was there a flicker of disappointment in Valentine’s eyes? “It belongs to me as much as any other,” he said, sliding the Sword back into its sheath. “It was given to all Nephilim, not just the Silent Brothers. Do you know its history? _‘And he placed at the east of the garden of Eden a cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way.’_ Sielu is that blade, the sword with which the Angel drove Adam and Eve from the garden.”

“Thanks for the refresher,” Jace said, “but you still can’t take it. I’m going to face trial. Without the Sword, they’ll leave me down here.”

“And what charge have they invented to cage you, my son?” Valentine asked, softly, and again Jace could not make himself answer.

Valentine shook his head; his silver-white hair fell like snow about his shoulders. “Come with me,” he said.

“What?” Jace started—not back, but towards the bars. “Didn’t—didn’t we try this already?”

“I made a mistake at Renwicks,” Valentine said, as Jace tried not to gape at him. “I treated you like the child I remembered you to be, not as the man you are now. I was wrong. You are a man grown, Janim, courageous and loyal, a prodigy of a Shadowhunter. You are everything I ever hoped you would become, a gem in the Clave’s crown, and I would be honoured to have you at my side.” He held out his hand. “Let me free you, not only from their cell but from their lies, Janim. I promise I will explain everything.”

Jace froze. He stared at his father’s outstretched hand, knowing he could reach it if he only stepped forward, if only he tried, just a little—

A roar split the world, a roar that shook the earth out from under them. Valentine staggered back and nearly fell and the sound of a star screaming drowned out the clank of Jace’s chain as he stumbled; no fear-wail this, no dirge for the dead but a howl of war, a cry not for the dying but the ones about to die, a promise and an oath sworn in rage fit to tear suns asunder. It rang like thunder echoed on bronze, shaking the very air Jace breathed, and his Marks burned on his skin in answer, igniting like signal fires beneath his clothes—

He turned to Valentine, about to ask _what is that_ , but Valentine’s expression stopped him. For the first time in his life he saw his father truly afraid, unabashed fear plain as a wound on his face, in his ever-controlled eyes. The witchlight had fallen from his hand, and he seemed to have forgotten Jace; he was turned away, looking-listening up the corridor, to where the stairs led to the upper levels and the source of that sound—

It came again, that shattering, explosive scream of fury, and Jace watched with disbelief as Valentine flinched as if from a blow. He had snatched up the witchlight again before Jace understood that his father meant to leave him here after all—

“No! Wait!” He rushed to the bars, but Valentine paid him no attention at all. “What’s coming? What is it? Don’t leave me chained to face it!”

Valentine spared him a cool look. “Don’t worry,” he said, almost bitterly. “It will not hurt _you_ apurpose. But _me_ —I must go.” He swept for the door by which he’d appeared, pausing only a moment with his hand on the frame. “We will talk of this again, Janim. We are not done, you and I.”

“No!” Jace shouted as Valentine pulled the door closed behind him, disappearing without another backwards glance. “Father, please! _Please!”_

But the door clicked as the lock caught, and he was alone again, caged and helpless while somewhere in the dark, a monster’s howl threatened to break the world.

* * *

 

NOTES

 

Chapter title comes from a quote by Alejandra Pizarnik; “Because no one has more thirst for earth, for blood, and for ferocious sexuality than the creatures who inhabit cold mirrors”.

 _Allar_ means bind or bind up in Enochian.

Syr is a gender-neutral term of address used for all Shadowhunters, the same way Light Worlders would use Mr/Mrs/Miss etc.

The lithu or lilim are the children of Lilith and Samael in the Zohah Kabbalah; so, a particular kind of demon. Among the Nephilim they are viewed as especial abominations because Lilith was supposed to be the mother of humanity, and turned aside from that destiny. For Shadowhunters there can be nothing worse than turning your back on humanity to embrace the Infernal, which is what Lilith did in the myths, more or less.

Caïna is part of the Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno—the Circle/Level of Traitors. Caïna is reserved for those who are traitors to their family.

Sator is Latin for Creator/begetter/founder, and is a title/name Nephilim sometimes give to Raziel in their prayers. Prayers to Jonathan Shadowhunter address him as Genitor, for those who are interested; its meaning is creator/father/ancestor.

A tertian is a piece of music composed of thirds.

The _Sepher Ha-Razim_ is a book of spells given by the angel Raziel to Noah.

Because it’s been a while since it was mentioned; _harpagmos_ is the name for the two-month isolation entered by couples wanting to become _parastathentes_ before they actually bond.

 _Jackie_ is a Nephilim pet-name, short for jackalope—a mythological creature that looks like a rabbit with antlers.


	10. Let the Winds of Heaven Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the thanks goes to my amazing beta Starrie_Wolf, without whom this chapter would be a lot shorter and not half as good. As it is, I cried writing all three drafts. Consider yourselves warned.
> 
> This has been a long time coming.

Waves of invisible fire crashed through the Institute, breaking like burning surf against her Marks, and Isabelle was out of her seat and running before her conscious mind could put it together, a lifetime’s well-honed instincts remembering-understanding-acting without the need for deliberation. Max shouted something behind her but she didn’t stop to listen, her runes singing like struck glass through her skin as she sprinted through corridors and up flights of stairs, doorways and paintings turned to smears of colour by the speed of her steps, her hair a black whip behind her—

Another wave of searing gold, invisible but not intangible, swept through the building like a tsunami; her every Mark rang with it like a struck gong and she knew what it was, knew what it meant, found herself standing in the doorway of the Infirmary and was not surprised to see Simon sitting upright on a cot, his eyes and skin full of a light that cast strange shadows on the wall behind him, his hand upraised and held against Syr Bellesword and Isabelle’s father.

She was not surprised to see that it was not Simon at all.

She felt the moment the angel recognised her presence like a flaming brand held to her breastbone, a golden agony as if the full might of the sun’s fire had turned its attention on her alone. Her Marks sang beneath it and her body trembled, struck by the immensity of that regard, terror and awe a carcanet about her heart—

 _“Quiida i tox?”_ it snarled through Simon’s voice, a demand so clear the glass in the windows shivered and Syr Bellesword and Izzy’s father both flinched as if whipped, Simon’s human voice too thin a protection against the lightning-strike that burned behind it—

But Izzy didn’t flinch. The thunder in the angel’s words echoed in her chest, and her ears rang with it, every bone in her humming like windchimes in the wake of that voice, and she stood her ground without quailing.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I don’t understand you.”

It stared at her without blinking, Simon’s eyes turned to stars by the power looking through them. _“Nurma!”_ it said sharply. _“Quiida i Nurma?”_

She shook her head, spreading her hands to illustrate her helplessness. “I don’t understand,” she repeated.

And abruptly he, it, stood inches from her, ablaze with gold like a figure of living light, and Izzy’s breath dissolved into smoke as it took her face in Simon’s hands, so gently, and his hands were Midas’ hands, turning her to gold with the angel’s touch—

“Where,” it asked through Simon, through lips gilded with Heaven’s might, “is he?”

“Jace?” she whispered, because who else could the angel be looking for, this angel who had stood over her brother and held the Mortal Sword between him and the Inquisitor?

 _“Jace,”_ it echoed, and nothing more.

“In the Silent City,” Izzy said. There were planets revolving in the angel’s gaze, comets and moons dancing there as if all the universe were held enclosed in its mind like an orrery…

“City of bones,” the angel said, sing-song and eerie, “city of the dead, city of the dark.” It held her face in its hands, and her runes _burned_. “Can you hunt him through the shadows, Shadowhunter? Can you find him?”

“Yes,” she said.

_“Then show me.”_

And the world turned to fire.

Distantly she heard her father’s cry and Syr Bellesword’s sudden curse; distantly she was aware of a curtain of flames enfolding her, embracing her, flames that arced and beat like wings. But those eyes held hers, held her as if she were a star it would add to the constellations she could see revolving in its gaze, and the rest of the world became a faint and far-off dream, nothing like as real as the music searing through her soul; the song of spheres, a wild and rhapsodic chorale that encompassed all the world in its singing, every world, every living thing, and for the briefest of instants she heard the song of her own body, her every cell a vital note in the Song of Songs—

Silence fell like a guillotine, and the loss of the music was so ruthlessly sudden, so terribly total that she cried out before she could stop herself. The flames parted, and she stumbled as Simon’s hands fell from her, stumbled as if wounded; she pressed a hand to her heart and felt the anguish there, even as her Marks still hummed with the faintest echoes of that heavenly song.

Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, she looked around—and ice spun like silk down her spine.

She was not standing in the Institute—was nowhere near the Institute. Instead in an instant of fire they had crossed half the city, so that now angel and Shadowhunter stood encircled by the names of the dead, inside the square that housed the New York entrance of the Silent City. The names of fallen Shadowhunters were engraved on the walls, macabre flower petals clasped around the statue of Raziel at their centre, Raziel with the Mortal Cup at his feet. Even as Izzy found her balance she saw Simon’s body approach the statue, and was struck by the strangeness of it, the image of these two angels facing each other, one clothed in mortal flesh and one in stone.

If Simon’s angel recognised the tableau it made it gave no sign. It stared at its marble cousin, and a wash of something terrible broke over Simon’s face like a shadow across the sun; enraged, frenzied, chillingly alien. Simon’s lip curled back in a snarl and his hands _wrenched_ at the air, a cutting, a tearing—

 _“Odo,”_ he hissed—

And the gate opened. With a groan like pain, the earth fell away beneath the statue, revealing the stairs that led down into the dark, down into the necropolis of the Silent Brothers, and the darkness seemed almost to reach out of it, to flow like poison from that yawning mouth—

The angel was staring at her again, a stare like a burning sword. _“Find him,”_ it said, _commanded_ , Simon’s voice wavering like heat-struck air, a mirage that would dissolve into fire at the least provocation, shred into that earth-shaking voice from the Council Chamber, the one that had made them all bleed from their ears and broken the blood vessels in their eyes—but beyond the glory Izzy could hear the terror in it, the frenetic energy that whipped and howled like scouring storm winds.

So she ran. Down the steps, into the dark; darkness that gave way like cringing demons before the angel’s fire, golden light that stretched ahead of them into the shadows. Izzy led the way down and her feet had wings, she was moving faster than she ever had, her Marks blazing with power as if new-drawn and fuelling a speed she’d never known before, so that together she and the angel seemed to fly down the stairs like twinned comets. In mere seconds they reached the first level of the Silent City, the staircase dissolving beneath their feet into an enormous space that Izzy could sense more than see, the open air of the long hall and high ceiling a tangible presence on her skin.

They did not stop, but crossed the floor in a streak of light, the angel ever a half-step behind-beside her, a living sun in the tomb-like dark. The City smelled of stone and dust and unloved space, and beyond their footsteps there was no sound at all.

No Silent Brothers appeared to bar their way, or demand an explanation for their presence. Had they fled from the angel’s light; did they hide from it even now, in the shadows where Izzy couldn’t see?

When they reached the stairs that led to the lower levels, she had her answer. Beside her, the angel snarled, shaking the ground beneath her feet, but the world did not change in the face of its fury. The stench of blood still rose up from the stairs, a thick miasma of coppery death that squeezed a fist around her heart.

 _“Jace,”_ she whispered. Jace was down there somewhere, and suddenly she understood why the angel was so desperate to find her brother. Something had gone very, very wrong in the Silent City.

As if Jace’s name was a charm against the dark, the angel’s light grew brighter. Lines of fire arched from Simon’s spine, twining and spiralling upwards and outwards through the darkness like vines of light, budding stars like fruit or blossoms. Izzy’s breath caught in her throat at the impossible glory of it, the wings of sunlight that lit up the topmost floor of the Silent City bright as day, washing colour across the vast plain of stone. For the first time Izzy saw the patterns decorating the floor, the night sky replicated in shades of marble, every star lovingly set down beneath her feet; while above the ceiling was a flurry of frescoes, seraphim and cherubim and dominions locked in an intricate dance, their wings interlaced in golden braids. In the paintings the angels had the feathered wings of birds, nothing like the sheets of dazzling fire that framed Simon now like the nimbus of a saint, shifting and undulating like the Aurora Borealis in every shade of gold, flames that writhed like water, changing shape from moment to moment; sharp edges melting into wave-like curves, spirals gaining razored points, tendrils and tongues stretching outwards in skeins of glowing gilt only to collapse into ripples of white wine and honey.

She was still staring at them, her eyes watering at their brightness, when the angel spoke. “Come,” it said, “we must go faster,” a command her body obeyed before her mind registered the imperative in it; it held out Simon’s hand and she took it, refused to cringe as it pulled her close and effortlessly lifted her up, as if she weighed nothing at all. Instinctively she looped her arms around Simon’s neck as the angel cradled her against Simon’s chest.

Her eyes wanted to close against the stunning brightness of him. She didn’t let them.

Without warning the angel plunged down into the dark, and Izzy’s gasp was lost to the light-drowned shadows. The stairwell was tight and close and they rushed down it like a riptide of fire, shearing the air before them; there was not enough space and yet they never touched the stone, never crashed even though Izzy was sure they must, stairs flashing past in their hundreds and floor after floor opening up and gone behind them and it was like being caught up in a burning whirlwind, flames and feathers of light whipping and lashing and flooding the staircase and she could not make herself look up at Simon’s face, could not catch her breath as they plummeted down and down and down—

Until with a rolling twist they soared through an archway and into-onto one of the lower floors, and Izzy felt it even as the angel let her go and she landed in a graceful crouch on the floor, knew it before the angel’s scream of fury broke the world apart like a hammer kissing a mirror; the wrongness, the wound in the fabric of the real—

There was a demon in the Silent City.

_And she was unarmed._

***

A roar of challenge burst from his-their-xyr throat like a sword from its sheath, gilded in fire and rage as Simon dropped to the ground in front of his-their-xyr Shadowhunter, countless wings flaring wide in a threat display older than this world’s sky; and the demon crouched over the bodies littering the floor quailed away from the radiance of heavenly fire. Its presence burned like poison in Simon’s throat, a sick cold around his heart, washing the world in a crimson hatred that spilled across the stone, dripped from the roof of the hall like brackish water; a hate that demanded, _compelled_ the Infernal’s utter destruction, an imperative like breath with all the force of a raging wildfire behind it, in it. The demon’s mephitis clawed at his light, an icy pressure against his flames, darkness of the abyss beating like waves against his light and xe-they-he snarled—

 _“Adokaz-_ _Aoi!”_ the demon hissed, grovelling, _prince of stars_ and xe hesitated, struck by the shock in its un-voice, by the weight of its words. _“Do you not remember me, Adokaz-prince? I am one of your own—forgive me, my prince, I did not believe the rumours of your return—we thought you dead!”_

Simon-and-not stared at it, uncertain, confused. Flickers of memories danced around the edges of the fire, shadows on the wall like dreams; a thousand demons kneeling to him, xem, calling xem just that, _prince of stars, Sword of the King,_ and xyr own voice singing it back, echoing the truth of it… For a millisecond that stretched aeons, Simon’s vision seemed to waver, doubling the bloodied corpses on the floor, the pillars holding up the roof, and for the merest moment the demon itself, the demon whose twin was not a black and noxious thing but a crouched figure of gleaming silver, ephemeral wings like moonlight on water curved about and behind it, mirrors to Simon’s own—

And in that instant it lunged, snarling, those silver wings become sheets of steel and then they were gone, there was only the umbra-wreathed monster with sun-on-ice eyes and a mouth full of stalactites, stalagmites and xe snapped into motion, whirling in place like a top with xyr wings spinning around xem like rotor blades, a whirlwind of light and fire and the demon screamed as its leap collided with that oscillating wall of burning edges—

Simon whipped his wings apart and caught the demon on the backstroke, smashing it back across the space. It crashed into stone and xe flew after it, the pillars shaking with the force of his roar, xyr scream of wrath, wings extended like claws, swinging like living swords for that manifest shadow. He plunged down on it like an axe like lightning and the demon twisted away, striking out, forming black limbs of its own shadow-stuff to meet xem with, a stinging scorpion’s tail and a porcupine’s thousand quills stinking with venom, acid and Simon’s wings were both armour and armoury, pairs of them folded around xyr fragile mortal core while others cut and slashed, blades of crystallised heat and frozen light, scything atoms in half and catching-shaping-hurling the resulting fireworks, the nuclear explosions like dying stars, at xyr enemy with wings that became limbs with all the fluidity of flame, morphing as needed, a meteor shower of light and heat flash-flash-flashing and the demon’s claws were jagged ice, splintered crystal lash-lash-lashing and raking xyr wings, sparks flying like blood from his wounds and stinking ichor splash-splash-splashing from the demon’s, spilling across the floor like oil. Fire and cold, stagnant water locked in opposition, trading wound for wound and not-blood for ichor, elemental titans casting terrifying lightshows and grappling, snarling, bleeding smoke and sparks as each fought to tear the other apart—

And in its protective cage of glass-clasped wings xyr human sleeve, the mortal heart of this countless-winged light-born creature, bled red wept red _screamed_ red, a haemophilic Snow White in his golden coffin, convulsing every time the demon’s claws found their way through that forest of wings to brush the pair wrapped around him—

And those wings flickered like candles in the wind, weakening—

But the demon was tiring too, slowing faster, and xe shrieked like an eagle, like a glacier with vicious triumph, and dived upon it.

***

When the angel engaged the demon Izzy found herself surrounded by the leavings of a massacre—the light of the angel’s wings lit a field of corpses, dozens of Silent Brothers cast down bloody on the ground. The air stank of blood and death, the foulness mortals made in their final moments, and probably Izzy could have stopped to give the fallen their last rites, but instead she plunged among the bodies for a weapon, any weapon, because there was a darkness here that the angel’s wings did not, could not banish, a shadow that writhed and twisted, a demon who should not have been able to enter the city at all—

But of course there was no need, really, to find a weapon—it was not as if the angel was going to need the help of a seventeen year old Shadowhunter, not even Dedicated, to defeat a single demon.

She paused, then, kneeling next to the body of a Silent Brother, in the coagulating blood that had come from his mouth when he fell. _(Never mind, her_ cóada _was already ruined, already stained with Simon’s blood from this morning…)_ She longed for her glorious electrum whip, but it was true, wasn’t it? What angel would need her help? She would only get in the way—and so she watched, unaware that she was trembling, unable to say, if she had been asked, whether she shook with awe or terror. The battle was as far from the fights she knew as the sun to a tea-light, a wholly different thing. The angel fought with its wings, huge scythes of golden light that took new shapes between Isabelle’s blinks, wreathing it in what were simultaneously weapons and unhuman limbs that it controlled effortlessly, moving through the air like a bullet; the demon was smoke and sickness, forming and re-forming as the angel’s wings cut its creations apart, lashing with terrible claws, teeth, pincers and tails. It was like watching a thunderstorm, the flash of lightning in a dark sky; tangled together, crashing together, angel and demon alike both seemed monstrous, like nothing Izzy’s world could ever have birthed. Light and lightnessness, fire and living night both wreathed in ozone and the splash of sparks, and those who thought only the dark was terrible had never understood the power that made the deserts—never seen that hurricane of cutting wings, that storm of burning swords, never heard a demon scream as if for mercy as it cringed away from a blow, gushing ichor upon the stone floor—

It was terrible—and it was glorious. Izzy was afraid and elated, terrified and overjoyed with visceral wonder, for here, _here_ was proof that the Shadowhunters had behind them a force to rival the full might of Hell, to rival and _devastate_ it utterly—here was Raziel’s kin come to fight for Raziel’s children and _prove_ that there was hope, there was purpose, there was a reason for the tithe of pain and deaths laid upon Izzy’s people _and it was a price well-paid_ —it was well-paid and well-done and the Nephilim’s Celestial family were proud of them, recognised their sacrifices—

_Would fight with them—_

And when the angel cried aloud with what could only be triumph, plunging down like a hawk for the kill, Izzy shouted with it, ablaze with that same savage exultation, rising to her feet with the force of the cheer that ripped out from between her bared teeth—

It did not occur to her that an angel, even one currently incarnate, would have any trouble with a demon. It had not occurred to her to worry. But suddenly the fearful, abject, wounded demon lunged upwards with a mouth that gaped open like an earthquake, full of teeth longer than Izzy’s arms and clearly not so wounded it had appeared to be—and those teeth, those black-ivory teeth like splinters of the abyss caught and sheared through a whole cluster of wings that exploded into dying sparks—

And the angel screamed.

Not in rage or anticipated celebration but in _pain_ , in agony that clapped Izzy’s hands over her ears in a useless, shameful attempt to shield herself from it. It rang from the stone walls and bled across the floor in a gush of sound, and even as Izzy’s hands fell incredulous so did the angel, crashing to the ground like a star cut from its moorings in the sky—

And—

_No—_

The demon laughed, an awful, thunderous sound as it twisted and pounced on the angel’s glowing form, a demonic cat leaping for an injured mouse—

_No—_

The world didn’t work that way—

The angel screamed again, not a mouse but a trapped butterfly, auroric wings struggling beneath stabbing claws, flickering like dying witchlights—

Dying—

_No—_

_The world does not work this way—_

Her hands were empty. Her hands were empty and Simon was in there, _Simon_ , Jace’s heart and Izzy’s friend—but more than that, larger than that, loomed the death of how she understood the universe to be, the fall of light before the dark, the undoing of all she and all her ancestors before her had fought for bled for _died_ for, over and over they had died and that was what they _did_ , it was the price they paid it was why they were made, but they did it hoping believing _knowing_ that there was something bigger, something greater, some light that could not go out no matter their individual failures, and if that was not so—

It could not _be_ not-so—

The sun rose in the east and nausea was bad and two plus two was four, Shadowhunters died and warlocks lived forever and Light Worlders shaped the world and beyond it all, above it all, the light, the light of Heaven was greater than the shadow of Hell, _that was how the universe worked—_

The angel screamed and—

_No—_

_No, THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY_

—and Izzy screamed with it.

Screamed, as white light to rival the sun burst from her hands like a nursery of stars being born. Screamed as, without conscious deliberation, her palms came up to halt the desecration before her. Screamed, as the light, _her_ light seared across the space between like Artemis’ silver arrow and struck the demon that had profaned this place and blasphemed against the world. Like a tide of glittering diamonds it smashed into the monster, carried it back and back and back and Izzy was screaming, defiance and denial, rejection and revolt as the white light of stars streamed through her and out of her with the roar of all the oceans of the world, the howl of every wind that blew above every field, the rumble of the earth beneath her feet and above it all she screamed and screamed and screamed—

_NO!_

_THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY!_

Somewhere very distant, she was aware of the demon screeching fit to wake the dead, saw the smoke of it boiling as it writhed. She knew the light could kill it, not merely send it back to the realm it came from but destroy it utterly, and she sensed the moment the demon knew it too, the terror in it, its horror of her.

She felt it when the demon fled from her, her and her light, and vanished into the tunnels of the Silent City like a rat into a sewer, bleeding great gouts of foul smoke and ichor. She felt it like a wrongness gone, a weight lifted, a false thing made true again.

And the river of starlight faded from her hands like a witchlight no longer needed.

As she was, now, no longer needed.

The thought barely had time to flit through her mind before Isabelle Lightwood—who had never swooned in her life and had never expected that to change—fell to the ground in a dead faint, and lay quiet and still amidst the corpses, and thought no more.

***

Simon came back to the world with the thick taste of copper in his mouth and nought but blackness above him.

The angel—the creature—had retreated, and without its wings Simon could see nothing, had to lift shaking fingers to his eyes to be sure they were even open. The darkness was total, impenetrable. But then, they had to be hundreds of feet underground at least…

 _Or maybe I’ve gone blind_ , he thought, panicked, and his body was awash with pain, every inch of him aching as if he’d been pummelled by a football team. His fingers found his cheeks wet, and with resigned familiarity he recognised the scent of his own blood, found it smeared beneath his eyes and around his mouth, at his ears and below his nose.

_At least I’m not choking on it this time…_

He took a deep breath and sat up, the sheer totality of the dark making him feel dizzy, as if he might tumble away into it if he moved wrong. He set his palms down on the cool stone floor to reassure himself that he was not, in fact, hovering in some terrible void.

He smelled blood and ozone, the too-sweet scent of demonic ichor and a horrible smell like the worst kind of public toilets—ammonia and faeces, thick and awful. It took his sluggish mind too long to remember the bodies he had glimpsed through the angel’s attention, dozens of Silent Brothers scattered like broken dolls on the floor; took him longer to remember that those bodies would have voided their contents when they died. That was the source of the smell.

He swallowed. His throat burned, horrifically raw. _I need light_ , he thought, knowing that, for once, he had no seraph blade to light his way. You couldn’t bring weapons to a meeting with the Inquisitor, Jace had said, and so Simiel was waiting on Simon’s pillow at Alec’s apartment. And Simon had no witchlight stone, didn’t even have a stele. _Without light I’ll never find my way out of here._

Izzy. He had to find Izzy. She had done something…saved him, and the angel with him. There had been a white light…

Simon curled his hands into fists and reached for the angel buried inside him like shrapnel, pleading, hoping. _Light._ He needed light. He needed _light_ , because Izzy hadn’t made a sound and that meant she needed help; because Jace was in a cell somewhere down here and that demon was not, he thought, dead; because without light all three of them were trapped down here, in the endless dark—

_LIGHT!_

A wave of exhaustion not his own broke briefly over him—and a softly gleaming light shimmered hesitantly into existence, a slender bracelet around his right wrist growing brighter by the moment; his _enkeli_ rune, glowing beneath his sleeve. When he rolled up the bloodied silk the light of the Mark was like a bizarre lantern set into his skin, a strong, clear gold, and Simon didn’t even have the strength to be amazed, only grateful that it had worked.

He held up his arm. Like the beam of a lighthouse, the light cut like a knife through the dark, illuminating drying pools of blood, stones cracked and charred by the fighting of angel and demon—but no bodies, and no Isabelle.

They’d been fighting at the far end of the hall, Simon told himself. The angel had left Izzy at the other end, further than the light could reach. He just had to go find her.

He had to crawl. His legs refused to bear his weight, his entire body seemingly folded out of paper—ripped paper, stained and waterlogged, and that made no sense but Simon couldn’t make himself care, didn’t have the energy to straighten out his metaphors. Achingly, awkwardly, he inched himself along the stone floor, struggling to light his way with the rune Marked on the inside of his right arm. There followed a horrible, endless stretch of time that would haunt him till the day he died; the stench; the chill, all-encompassing darkness; the bruised throbbing of his bones; the heavy awareness of the dead built into the walls, and those more recently fallen laid in their own blood on the ground. The _silence_ , a cage of lead simultaneously constricting and too large, choking him and leaving him certain that there was something out there in the dark with him.

There wasn’t. There _wasn’t_. But it was impossible to be sure, to quiet that primal animal terror, and he dragged it behind him like a corpse as he crawled.

Maybe he went in circles for a while; there was no telling. It felt like years later that his beam of light found an outlying body at last, a Silent Brother whose pale umber robe was stained dark with his own blood, his sewn-sealed mouth ripped open in a silenced cry. The horror of it, coming unexpectedly out of the dark, nearly stopped Simon’s heart; he bit down on an unfeigned scream and the light snapped out without warning, leaving him alone with that image seared into his brain, those empty eye-sockets and the gaping, bloodied mouth—

It took too long for him to bring the light back.

When he managed to once more make his _enkeli_ Mark play nightlight, Simon continued on, stopping every few minutes to sweep his light around and look for Izzy. Soon he was crawling through tacky, drying blood, sickeningly sticky beneath his hands and knees, and trying not to wonder if he could have prevented this massacre. He—they, him and the angel—they had come for Jace, had known something was wrong; the need to get to him had been overwhelming, as irresistible as a heart’s need to beat. It was gone now—presumably, _hopefully_ the demon had run far beyond where it was a threat to his _aikane_ —but if they had been faster…

 _They’re not dead because of me,_ Simon told himself, even as another, colder voice whispered;

_But you could have saved them._

They’d had stories of their own, these men; stories that had nothing to do with him, of which he was no part, but no less real than his, no less _important_. The Silent Brothers were a strange sect, but they were still human, still Nephilim; they’d had desires and dreams, grudges and nightmares. They’d been children once.

 _And now they’re meat_ , another part of him said dismissively, and Simon grit his teeth.

Isabelle was near the stairs. She was lying on her side as if she’d fallen, and Simon went to his knees beside her, wishing sharply for a stele; if she’d hit her head she would need an _iratze_ at least, but he had nothing to draw it with...

When a solution occurred to him, he almost smacked himself, it was so obvious: he was surrounded by Nephilim! Of course one of the Silent Brothers would have a stele. Grimly, he searched the bodies around him, trying not to gag, his flesh crawling. It was a difficult, undignified, fumbling search, trying and often failing to keep the light on what he was doing; by the time his fingers closed on the slim, cool rod of a stele in a dead man’s pocket Simon hardly glanced at it, exhausted past bearing. He shuffled back to Izzy and pushed up her sleeve, awkwardly holding the now blood-smeared stele in his left hand so that his right could shine light on the network of Marks already gracing Izzy’s arm.

Carefully, he drew a small _iratze_ —since size had no bearing on a rune’s power—between a _sabedoria_ and a _tharros_ , and felt the familiar drain as it took. For a minute his vision swam, and the light on his arm blinked like a firefly; the stele slipped from between his fingers to clatter on the ground—

And Izzy groaned, raising her hand to her head. “Simon…? Simon!”

She bolted upright, so quickly that she almost smacked their heads together; Simon only just got out of the way in time. “Careful!”

“Sorry.” When he angled his arm—sending the light, not in her face to blind her, but to the side so they could both see a little—she looked sickly pale. “Are you okay? What happened?”

She stared at him—and then down at her hands.

“Izzy?” he asked hesitantly.

“Light,” she said. “Light came out of my hands.” She was still staring at them.

“…Okay.” … _That sounds fake, but okay,_ his mind added hysterically. “I take it this is not a normal Shadowhunter thing?”

She shook her head.

“Have you ever done it before?”

“No.”

“…Okay.” _What the fuck._ “Well, thanks. Pretty sure you saved my life.” It came out far more lightly than he’d meant—and that was a terrible pun—fuck it, he was too tired for this.

“Your Mark’s glowing,” Izzy said with surprise.

Simon resisted the urge to go _what?! By Jove you’re right!_ “Yes,” he said instead. _I levelled up and unlocked a new skill._ “But I don’t know how long I can keep it up. We need to—” He stopped as he suddenly realised that he had no idea what came next.

Isabelle, on the other hand, didn’t seem the least bit confused. “We need to get Jace,” she finished for him, calmly.

Simon bit his lip. The thought of leaving Jace alone in this City-turned-tomb cut at him, but… “Maybe it’s smarter to go get help first,” he started—

Only to double over as a wave of heat and gold like liquid sunlight crashed over and through him, flooding him to the brim with energy too hot to hold, to contain, and Simon swallowed his words in a choke of copper—

A certainty to warp his bones and burst his heart and put him back together _kintsugi_ -style, brimming-burning with desperation-denial; _no_ , he could not, could not leave Jace here in the dark with the dead, behind bars he should never have been thrown behind—

_FIND HIM._

The compulsion was stigmata tearing him open, a need stronger than breath; Simon was on his feet before he knew it, fuelled by that energy, that _urgency_ to have Jace near him and all right, in his arms and well, unharmed, warm and alive.

“The angel wanted to find Jace,” Isabelle said, still in that eerily calm voice. “So we need to find him.”

“Yes,” Simon agreed, no longer at odds with her. He offered her his light-gilded hand to help her up.

Electricity sparked between their palms when they touched, jolting lightning-like up Simon’s arm and down his spine. The light of his Mark bleached white in an instant, gold gone pearlescent and shining like a star, and as Simon automatically pulled her to her feet he drew a sharp breath at the saccharine shock of it.

 _“Naleli cayaare,”_ he whispered—something else whispered through him, words of pearl and platinum like sorbet on his tongue, sweet and cold and sharp, and he saw the glow of his eyes reflected in Izzy’s—

And blinked, and it was gone, the only light the steady gold of his _enkeli_ rune and his mouth gone dry, and only Izzy’s wide eyes to say it had happened at all.

“Star dancer,” he said before she could ask. He let go of her hand. “It means—star dancer.”

She nodded slowly. “I’ll ask Alec,” she said simply.

And started walking. “Come on,” she tossed over her shoulder. “The cells are down this way.”

 _Naleli cayaare._ The whisper echoed in his head.

_Star dancer._

Simon followed her.

***

_Naleli cayaare._

_Star dancer._

Izzy replayed the words over and over in her mind as she led Simon—and the golden fire that kept sparking in his eyes—down through the Silent City. They found more bodies, more dead Silent Brothers, and neither glimpsed nor heard anyone alive. Distantly, she worried; was it really possible that the demon, whatever it was, had cut down the entire brotherhood? And how had it managed to get into the Silent City at all? Had someone accidentally broken the protections on this place, or had it been deliberate, a calculated attack? Her thoughts leapt to Valentine, of course, but why in Raziel’s name would he want to murder the Silent Brothers? Where was the gain for him?

Or was this something to do with the murdered warlock child—could this be the Spiral Court’s revenge for the loss, their strike against the Nephilim—? No, it couldn’t be—surely the Court would give them more than three days to find the killer they hunted—

And endlessly, dizzyingly, her mind circled the starlight.

_Star dancer._

It was gone, now. She couldn’t feel it inside herself, didn’t feel powerful or gifted in any way that she hadn’t been before. There was no sense that she could summon it again—no sense that she’d been the one to summon it at all. Maybe she _hadn’t_ been, maybe she’d only been a channel for someone else, something else—the angel that walked in Simon, or even Raziel, intervening to save his Celestial sibling’s life. If Simon’s angel could manipulate Shadowhunters by their Marks, who was to say Raziel, whose blood was in their very veins, couldn’t move his power through one of his children at need?

But Simon’s angel hadn’t thanked Raziel through her. It had named her instead: _naleli cayaare._

_Star dancer._

Well, maybe that was what angels called mortals who acted as mediums for angels; what did she know about it?

Alec might know. Alec was frantic, a mirror to her heart flashing her name in Morse code, and Izzy was grateful that the _agela_ -bond was beyond words because she had no words to give. Only the memories: the angel’s awful glory, burning her eyes like the sun; the demon’s black monstrosity, smoke and poison; the light filling her up like starlight in water, breaking out of her like a moonrise…

Alec felt very far away, when she thought about that light. And Izzy—Izzy felt tired. No, that was the wrong word—drained. She felt drained. Weightless. Strangely buoyant, as if, if she didn’t focus on walking on the ground, she might float away…

Simon too seemed lost in thought, so that he and Izzy walked in silence except for those times when she had to direct him. Her night-vision was good, much better than a Light Worlder’s, but even a Shadowhunter couldn’t see in pitch blackness. The only light was the glow of Simon’s rune, which he held up like a lantern uncomplainingly, even though after a while his arm must have been aching. But finally they came to a door that didn’t swing open when Izzy pushed at the handle.

“The cells should be through here,” she said, frustrated. If Simon’s angel wanted Jace out of the Silent City, then she would do her utmost to get Jace out—but even with her stele, she would never be able to get through a lock crafted by the Silent Brothers. “But I don’t know how we can—”

_“Odo.”_

Inside the door, Izzy heard the tumblers of the lock shift and click. When she touched the handle again, the door gave way, swinging wide open.

She turned to look at Simon, and saw the flicker of fire in his eyes, under his skin.

The corridor beyond the door smelled of blood and the dead, but Izzy hardly needed Simon’s light; at this distance even the runed block on Jace’s cell couldn’t hide him from her _agela_ sense. She saw through Jace’s eyes the moment the light reached him; with a flare of disorientation that almost made her stumble, she saw the hallway both from her angle and through the bars of his cell, the two images overlaying and blurring into each other—

“Jace!”

—and then Simon was there ahead of her, ignoring or possibly not even noticing the dead Silent Brother on the ground. He wrapped one hand around the electrum bars and lifted the other high, and Izzy saw her brother then, his gold skin pale and his wrist chained to the far wall, unwell but unharmed.

The relief was staggering.

But Jace clearly didn’t feel the same way. “What happened?” he demanded, and Izzy belatedly remembered that they were both covered in blood—Izzy in the Silent Brothers’, and Simon in his own, the repercussion of angelic possession. “There was something—I heard—are you all right?”

“We’re fine,” Simon said, which was maybe stretching it a little but Izzy didn’t see the need to argue the point.

“There was a demon,” she told Jace. “It killed the Silent Brothers—we haven’t seen anyone still alive down here. Simon’s angel and I drove it off.”

Jace’s face twisted. “Valentine brought it here,” he said wearily.

Simon stiffened. “He was here?” His voice had a snarl in it.

Jace nodded. “He’s stolen the Mortal Sword. I don’t know what for. He was…”

Izzy could feel his helplessness even through the block. “It’s okay,” she said, even though it clearly wasn’t. “We’re getting you out of here. Everything else we can figure out in the sunlight.”

She turned to Simon, raising her eyebrows. “Can you open it up?” she asked, meaning _like the other door, like the City’s entrance_. If he couldn’t, she would check to see if the dead Silent Brother had been carrying keys—

Simon didn’t even look at her; the anger in his face turned to fire, and he closed both hands around the bars of the cell’s door. Light shot down his arms like lightning, gilding every vein—

And he ripped the door out of the wall.

***

The hinges gave with a screech of metal like a demon’s howl and Simon tossed the door aside like it was cardboard, bronze and gold beating in his head like drums, like wings. He strode into the cell with light moving under his skin like water and all he could think was _Jace_ , all he knew was the need-want-craving to gather his _aikane_ close and be sure of him, know down to his marrow that Jace was all right, okay, in one piece and well.

Jace was staring at him as if hypnotised, and Simon caught his face between his hands and kissed him, frantic, needing, there was blood on his cheeks and chin but Jace kissed him back like it didn’t matter, pressed into him and Jace’s mouth was warm and alive and Simon couldn’t get enough of it. The chain on Jace’s wrist rattled and Simon didn’t hesitate a second, dug his fingers under the manacle and tore it like paper and heard it clatter to the ground without even glancing at it, kissing Jace over and over, tasting him, the life in him, the unhurt-ness of him, Jace’s hands twisting just as desperately in his hair and Simon’s skimming over Jace’s body, relearning reassuring himself of the unbroken lines, the solid reality of his lover. _You were gone they took you away from me, locked you in the dark with the dead_ andthe blur the sear of something fiery and vicious rushing through Simon a tidal wave of gold, sheets of light like silk folding around Jace like protective arms, like walls of adamantium and Jace was shaking, trying to speak and Simon swallowed his words down, licked them off his lips like sugar, _lost, you could have been lost, if the demon had gotten down here_ and it was an unbearable thought, a burning blade of terror-rage-desperation no less sharp for being parried, blocked, averted, _you’re okay you’re okay_ as he kissed Jace over and over, “I thought you were dead,” Jace’s whisper like a secret and Simon crooning in his throat, honey behind his teeth and “Not this time,” nuzzling him, biting him so gently and Jace was trembling against him, shaking harder, his callused hands sliding down Simon’s skull, his neck, to his shoulders—

And shoving him away.

It was a Shadowhunter’s push and Simon almost fell, caught his balance only at the last instant, the wings that had embraced Jace shredding into sparks as they broke around him and Simon didn’t understand, his lips were still aching, bruised and “Jace?”

“No,” Jace said, and his voice had a patina like bronze, dull and rough. “We’re not doing this.”

“Doing what?” Simon’s mind was a whirlpool, spiralling and confused and full of a roaring that drowned out his pulse. They—they had to get out of here, had to find their way back to the surface, tell someone that the Silent Brothers were dead, and Jace…

Jace stepped back, away from him and it made no sense, did not compute, Simon was staring at him as Jace said, “This. Us. We can’t do this anymore.”

“What?” Slowly, slowly, it was coming together, and Jace’s expression wasn’t breaking into a grin, wasn’t revealing the joke, was instead resolute and unyielding and everything of fire in Simon was icing over, going cold. “That’s not funny, dearling.”

“It’s not supposed to be,” Jace said with lips still red from their kisses. “I mean it. We can’t be together anymore, Simon.”

Individually, the words all made sense, but together the pattern they formed was incomprehensible, a Rorschach test with nothing in it, no shape to it and Simon was failing it, failing the test, he knew it and couldn’t help himself, couldn’t see what could not be there. “I don’t understand,” he said desperately, helplessly, and felt it like a wound when Jace looked away.

_No no no, don’t, look at me, LOOK AT ME—_

“It’s not that complicated,” Jace said. “This—us—it was never going to last. You had to know that.”

“No,” Simon whispered, and maybe it was a lie, he wasn’t sure, but there was nothing else he could humanly say in answer. “I didn’t know. Why would I?”

“Because there was never anywhere for it to go but to an end,” Jace said. “There’s no life for us, Simon. There never was.”

“Not if we don’t _try,”_ Simon said frantically, “not if you won’t even try—if you just give up—why are you giving up?”

 _“Because there’s nothing to believe in!”_ Jace snapped, driving Simiel right through Simon’s heart and Simon couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, the ground giving way underneath him and his eyes on fire with stupid, _stupid_ tears. “It’s a _fantasy_ , it was _always_ a fantasy, lovely while it lasted but it was never going to last forever, Simon! And now it’s time to wake up and grow up. Or did you think there was a white picket fence in our future?”

That was cruel, needlessly cruel, Jace hadn’t even known that phrase until Dean had mentioned it on _Supernatural_ and Simon had explained it, they’d laughed and Jace had teased him and hearing it now was a twist of the knife. Simon wanted to cry _why are you doing this_ but he knew, part of him knew and that was the worst part, the worst thing. “No,” he managed, his breath hitching, “no, I didn’t, but there could be _something_ , we could make _something_ if we tried, if you wanted it, there’s nothing saying that we can’t—”

“There are _two worlds_ that say we can’t!” and Jace was almost yelling now, almost shouting, voice raised and toxic and terrible, _don’t do this, please don’t do this._ “Where are we supposed to go, Simon? Where’s this dreamland where we can be together? Because it’s not your world, and it’s not mine!”

“Fine, we can’t get _married,”_ Simon shouted, “so what? I never asked you for that, I never needed to go public, it can stay a secret—”

 _“It isn’t a secret anymore!_ They know! And even if they didn’t—even if it was a secret, what then? What was your plan? Were you going to be Dedicated, were you going to smile at my wedding, were you not going to _mind_ when I had children with someone else, a life with somebody else that you can’t share and you can’t have? Or was I supposed to give up being a Shadowhunter for you? Was that it? Go to college with you, get a degree in media studies? Would that be sufficiently mundane for you? _Was that what you wanted?”_

 _“I wanted **you**!”_ Simon cried. “I want _you_ , I don’t _care_ , Jace, tell me what you want and I’ll do it! Tell me—” Crying, he was crying, tears falling from his eyes like rain and he couldn’t remember how to be ashamed, couldn’t figure out how to care about something so unimportant. “Tell me you want me and I’ll take your oaths, okay, I’ll be a fucking Shadowhunter, I’ll never say a word against the Clave again, I swear, I _promise_ —I’ll be their perfect pureblood, everything they want, everything _you_ want—”

Jace was watching him with what could only be pity. “You can’t,” he said softly.

“I _can_ , I can, I _will_ , I’d bleed out every drop of Morgenstern blood if that was what you wanted—”

“You can’t do that either.” Jace’s voice had hardened, crystallised. “And even if you could, you’d still be a man, Simon. You’d still be male. You’d still be a singer, an anarchist, a _Light Worlder_. You would still be you, and my world has no place for you in it.”

 _“Then leave it!”_ Simon shouted, and it was like a bandage being ripped off, long- swallowed words come spilling out like rotten blood from a hidden wound, one that had been buried and suppressed for weeks that weighed like years; Jace recoiled, physically flinched back as if he couldn’t believe and Simon tasted the words like razors, knew they were too sharp too much too far as Jace’s eyes went wide and shocked, raw and unfeigned but Simon couldn’t take it back, couldn’t stop the words from shooting out of his mouth like bullets, like head-shots, heart-shots— “For once in your fucking life, choose yourself over your precious mandate! You want to talk about fantasy versus reality, fine, let’s, here we go! You think your people are chosen, you think you’re _special_ , but the reality is that you’re going to die young and in agony because you’re too fucking stupid to walk away! Shadowhunters aren’t warriors of God, Jace, they’re brainwashed idiots playing soldiers who abuse their kids ’cause that’s what mommy and daddy did to them! And you know what, _no one fucking cares!_ There’s no such thing as a glorious death, there’s no such thing as heroes, and maybe they’ll remember your name but it won’t matter, because you’ll be dead and the dead can’t hear the fucking stories we tell about them!” He was screaming now, crying now and couldn’t stop, it wasn’t fair of him and he didn’t care, he’d been wanting-waiting to say this for what felt like _years_ and and and Jace’s face growing more and more still, more and more closed, final. “So _leave!_ Leave with me, because they don’t deserve you and maybe no one will remember your name when you’re gone, but you’ll be _happy_ , you can have an entire lifetime of being happy and being _human_ , instead of some toy soldier dying in the dark before you’re thirty—”

And for a second, for a second—gods and Time Lords, for a second he thought he saw something like indecision in Jace’s face, something like longing, a crack ajar in the closed door of his eyes and _please—_

_Please, please, please—_

They could have a life, if Jace turned his back on his people. Their mom would understand when she woke up, Clary didn’t care, and no one else had to know that Jace and Simon shared blood. Jace could go to school, make friends he’d never have to watch die, become a martial arts teacher or a doctor or work in a music store. He could see movies in the cinema and visit the aquarium, the zoo, learn to skateboard or code or play football, he could collect stamps and be _happy_ , be _human_ , simply, complicatedly human, and Simon would love him till the day he died—on a deck chair in the sunshine, at eighty, or ninety, or a hundred and two—

If Jace could turn his back on his people. Such an enormous thing to ask of someone.

Such a small one, against the future it could buy.

 _“Aikane,”_ Simon whispered. “Please.”

Agony flashed across Jace’s face like the strike of a sword—but he was a Shadowhunter to the core, wasn’t he, he knew how to stand beneath pain and Simon’s heart snapped like a bone as Jace shook his head, and it was a death-knell tolling, deep in the dark—

_No_

_No_

_No_

“You can’t seriously think I would do that,” Jace said, and it was nearly a sneer, a whiplash snapping across Simon’s throat; the contempt in it, the ice. “We’re _at war_ , Simon, and you want me to turn tail and run away—abandon my friends, my family, just so I can read _Harry Potter_ and eat candy-floss—”

 _“You’re not going to win!”_ Simon yelled. “You told me that, _you told me that_ , it’s a war you will never win, so why _not_ leave, haven’t you paid enough blood to it yet—”

 _“And what then?”_ Jace shouted, so suddenly Simon that Simon jumped. “Should we _all_ just give up, all of us Shadowhunters? What makes me so special, surely every other ’hunter is worth just as much, surely they _all_ deserve to grow old and die in their beds, but then what, Simon? Who fights then? Who protects your Fallen-damned Light World _then?_ Should we all just watch New York become another Atlantis because none of us deserve to fall in battle? Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Trenton, Dover—how many cities would you let fall before you agreed I should defend them? Delphi? Shanghai? Cairo? London? How many people would you let die—a million? Ten million? A hundred million? How many is enough, Simon? How much blood do you think my life should cost?” He was shaking again, but not from kisses this time, not with anything like desire, and Simon had never seen him like this before, had never considered that maybe Jace had words like mines hidden in him too— “Maybe we’ll fall eventually, but every year we buy is a victory, every day we give the mundanes is another day for them to find a better solution—maybe their scientists will find a way to seal the world-wards and keep the demons out forever, or maybe they’ll figure out how to give themselves the Sight and learn to fight the monsters themselves, but they’ll do it because _we gave them time_ , because we bought them the world!” Rage. Rage, and contempt, and maybe even— “You selfish _athumos_ , how can you even _think_ I’d walk away—the Nephilim are all that stand between you and the apocalypse, and you want me to leave even one inch of the wall unmanned? _How dare you even ask?”_

“Then let me fight with you.” Simon stood still, didn’t flinch under Jace’s bemused, angry glare, was too fucking desperate and afraid and broken to bend. “Right? If it’s so important, if the Nephilim are stretched so thin, then I’ll join you. I’ll be Dedicated and take the oaths in a year. I’m sure the Clave will be happy to get another pureblooded Shadowhunter in their ranks, won’t they? They might even like me more than you, with the angel riding shotgun.”

Jace said nothing.

“No?” Simon asked, and his voice shook, now, fractured, now, because he was so angry he thought he’d die with it, genuinely wondered if he might spontaneously combust into his own funeral pyre with a scream to wreck the world. “One life for billions, right? I’m a Shadowhunter, I can be as strong and fast as the rest of you, I can use the runes. I even have a whole pokédex of extra superpowers that you _don’t_ have, so actually, it’s my duty to fight, isn’t it? With great power comes great responsibility, so the great web-slinger tells us.”

“Simon…”

“I think I’ll do that,” Simon said. He wiped at his eyes, his cheeks with his sleeve. “I’ll tell the Inquisitor today. They can send me to the Academy. Maybe if I work hard, they’ll station me with you and Izzy and Alec. That’d be awesome. We can have Shadowhunter slumber parties.”

“Simon!”

“I’ll braid your hair and you can polish my sword. Or is that too gay for your beloved Clave?”

 _“You can’t be a Shadowhunter!”_ Jace shouted.

“Oh fine, you can braid _my_ hair and I’ll polish _your_ sword.”

“This is not a joke!”

 _“Of course it fucking is!”_ Simon exploded, and light roared out of him, blazed like a bonefire and Jace threw his arm in front of his face, covering his eyes. “Because the only reason, the _only reason_ you have for not wanting me to fight is because you don’t want to see me hurt, you don’t want me to _die_ , so how fucking _dare_ you ask me how dare I, when you’d do the exact same thing, when you’re _doing it now!”_

“Simon—”

“Fuck you, Jace!” Simon snarled, and the light in him snapped and lashed, flames dancing, whipping, storming, sending the shadows running and leaping on the walls. “This is what love _is,_ it’s realising someone else is worth more than you are, but it’s a false epiphany because we can only ever be worth as much as each other, I’m worth just as much and just as little as you, if you can demand it of yourself you can demand it of me, if you can choose then I can choose, and if you can fight then _so can I!”_ There was a ringing in his ears, a heat in his hands, wrapped around his spine as if his wings, the angel’s wings were braced to break through his skin and blaze. “I can be sacrificed or you can be saved, but you have to pick one or the other—”

_“I don’t love you.”_

The cell plunged into darkness.

*

“I don’t want you to become a Shadowhunter,” Jace said, when it became apparent that the light was not coming back, “because you think that if you do, we can be together in secret. We can’t. I don’t want to.” His voice froze, clotted like blood. “So there’s no need to play the martyr.”

*

“Unless you really do want to fight, for its own sake,” Jace continued, blithe, airy. “In which case, go right ahead. I won’t stop you.”

*

It felt like a long, long time before Simon realised that the dark was real, was not just internal but external too. With slow, clumsy effort, he willed the _enkeli_ Mark on his arm to glow, and the light it cast was dimmer than before.

When he looked up from the rune he found Jace watching him, his expression anxious. But it was gone as soon as he saw Simon looking, and the light was bad, and if Jace was worried about the angel freaking out…

It was quiet, the angel, buried deep. Simon reached for it and couldn’t find it and didn’t care.

The simple thought— _I don’t care_ , their words, and oh gods the fucking irony was a knife to the gut—made his throat close up, and Simon ducked his head away from the light, held his arm out to keep Jace from seeing how his face was marked with the stunning, agonising pain. As if his every nerve were screaming, but worse, deeper, twisting in him like razor wire and briar roses, and why did they call it heartbreak when every inch of you hurt?

He took a deep breath, and it scoured him like acid, and only then did he realise he had no idea what to say.

Part of him wanted to ask: _did you ever?_

The rest of him did not, because Jace might tell him.

No, that was stupid. Jace had not… No one was that good an actor. And Jace would not have risked what he had risked for anything less than an overwhelming love, a love like hemlock and cyanide. Deadly and total.

_I woke in your arms this morning. I woke to your heartbeat this morning. You loved me this morning._

Didn’t he? Hadn’t he?

Maybe Jace was more upset that Simon had slept with someone else than he’d seemed. Or maybe it was the Inquisitor; maybe, now that he was faced with the consequences, he’d decided that Simon wasn’t worth it. That even made sense. No one rational would stay in a relationship that cost so much.

_So why do I feel like I’m dying?_

“Are you sure?” he asked finally. Softly.

_Why do I feel like I’d rather be dead?_

He heard Jace sigh. “Enough,” he said, and he sounded tired. “It’s over, Simon. We’re done.”

_Enough._

_It’s over._

_We’re done._

Simon stared at him, felt the silence fill him up. Looking into Jace’s eyes was like meeting Medusa’s; Simon couldn’t figure out how to turn away, how to move, how to breathe.

_Enough._

_It’s over._

_We’re done._

__Enough._ _

_It’s over._

_We’re done._

_Enoughit’soverwe’redonedonedone—_

Jace looked away first.

_But I still love you. Doesn’t that mean anything?_

_Why doesn’t that mean anything?_

“Right,” Simon said, and his voice was a little stronger but just as raw. “Well. There’s nothing I can say to that, is there?”

“I’m—” Jace started but Simon made a sharp gesture.

“If you say you’re sorry,” he said pleasantly, with a smile full of shark teeth, “I will fucking lose it. _Don’t.”_

 His hand had flashed, as he gestured. Simon stared at his fingers and he wasn’t crying, not really. His heart was bleeding brine through his eyes, that was all.

_‘Your blood is my blood; your war is my war—’_

And then his breath hitched and he choked and he sobbed, he _was_ crying, was crying outright, awful and ugly and shameful because he couldn’t bear it, he couldn’t fucking bear it, _‘together we are stronger, together we are whole’_ but Jace was tearing them in two and Simon couldn’t even blame him, understood perfectly, all the logic was on Jace’s side and that only made it worse, made it crueller, no one had ever told him that star-crossed love was cocaine for the heart. And Simon threw away the needle before he could take another hit, ripped the gleam of silver from his finger, the Morgenstern ring Jace had put there like a wedding band, and hurled it with all his strength, with the bastard child of rage and hate and despair like vodka in his veins—

_Why does it hurt so much why why would you do this to me why would you hurt me like this how could you say—_

The silver hit the stone like a bullet, and the chime was a keen of mourning.

“Go and die then,” Simon managed, his breath catching on every word and tears streaming down his face and he couldn’t even be embarrassed, fuck the patriarchy’s insistence that men weren’t supposed to feel—all Simon could do was feel, all he was was feeling, an exposed nerve burnt and livid with ashes pouring through his ribs where his heart used to be, ashes and dust. “I hope it’s quick.”

***

Izzy pressed herself against the wall as Simon ran past her down the corridor, wrapped in the scent of salt like a cloak. She held herself still, her eyes squeezed shut as his footsteps slapped the stone and Jace’s pulse pounded in her throat, but even through her eyelids some light remained. She didn’t look, but she listened, and heard Simon stop not far off, remembering, perhaps, that she and Jace would need the light…

She heard him cry, wet, wounded sounds muffled against something—his sleeve?—and her own eyes stung with tears.

 _*Why did you do that?*_ she asked Jace, the thought a gossamer whisper brushing the winter of his mind, his ice-locked heart. She reached for him and the cold burned her, turned her aside like a parried blade. _*How could you do that to him?*_

She opened her eyes and walked the short distance to the cell. There was just barely enough light for a Shadowhunter to make out shapes in the gloom as Izzy tentatively paused in the doorway, unsure, despite the renewed _agela_ bond, what she would find.

Jace was kneeling on the ground, staring at something in his hand, and his thoughts were bound in diamond, cool and unbreakable, unfathomable.

“We need to follow him,” Izzy whispered. Simon had the light.

If she raised her voice, she would break.

She felt Jace’s fingers close around the metal ring, and knew what it was without words.

They said nothing. But in the last flickers of the light, Jace got to his feet, and the two of them followed Simon’s footsteps, and pretended not to hear him crying.

* * *

NOTES

 

 _Odo_ —open (Enochian).

 _Sabedoria_ and _tharros_ are the Runed names for the mental excellence and courage-in-combat Marks, respectively. 

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery (and sometimes other items) with gold/gold-dusted lacquer.

 _Naleli cayaare_ is pronounced nall-ell-ee kai-are-ey.

If you’ve forgotten, the ‘your blood is my blood; your war is my war’ comes from the Runed!Shadowhunter engagement oath. Jace and Simon said it together back in _City of Shadows_. The ‘together we are stronger; together we are whole’ is also a quote from that oath.


	11. A Mother's Word

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT LIVES!
> 
> No but seriously, you guys—I don’t know what happened. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get the next chapter to you. My brain got weird again and school suddenly exploded, and honestly I just lost my mojo for a while there :/ Not cool. Not fun. But this fic was never abandoned—I will never abandon Runed!—and I’m sorry for making you wait, but I promise, you will never wait in vain.
> 
> There have been so, so many amazing people loving this series. I have not often replied to your beautiful comments, because my hands are (still, perhaps forever) just not up to that much clicking and typing. But I have read and saved and cherished every single one. You guys have made me feel so loved, and so honoured, and I don’t know what I did to deserve any of you. You’re fabulous, and this chapter is dedicated to every last one of you. Thank you so much for loving my little story. Thank you for the kind words and the squeeing and the flailing, the encouragement and the caps-lock. I hope this chapter can be even a little bit worthy of you all.
> 
> And now, ONWARDS AT LAST!
> 
>  **Trigger Warning:** This chapter contains the death of two minor characters.

The journey to the surface passed in a dark haze, a fog of grief and bewilderment and aching, awful humiliation. The last thing Simon wanted was to be forced to walk at Jace’s side through the pitch blackness of the dead city, already so exhausted, so drained that the flights and flights of stairs drew tears from his eyes that had nothing to do with—

With—

But no, there was nowhere to hide, no privacy where he could work through his tattered emotions in some semblance of peace. Jace’s presence was the crater of a volcano, ablaze with molten rock and liquid fire, and walking beside him in heavy silence was like trying to walk the mountain’s rim while pretending not to see the plunge. It could not be ignored.

Except, of course, that it had to be. The fight was done, the dye cast, leaving nothing left to say

_(leaving a whole tome of unspoken words, and pride a chain binding it shut)_

and his chest full of shrapnel from his grenade-heart. There was nothing to do but pretend, as hard as he could, that Jace wasn’t here, that Izzy wasn’t there with them, that all three weren’t tied together with knots of painfully awkward tension, with utterly _pathetic_ social embarrassment—

 He was so, so tired. Every step seemed to drag a world with it, and Simon lost count of how many times he stumbled, grew used to the sense of sickening vertigo that accompanied their ascent—how could the world be spinning when he could barely see it? What was there to spin? His Mark’s light grew fainter and fainter until they couldn’t see much more than a foot or two ahead, and twice it flickered and died, leaving Jace and Izzy to wait uselessly while Simon scraped up the tattered shreds of his power to get it lit again. The effort left him a creature of paper and glass, light and hollow and echoing with it, and only Izzy’s tentative grasp of his wrist kept Simon from lying down on the stone floor and never getting up again.

Time stretched in the dark like a rubber band, until Simon swore he heard it _snap_ and give up; no matter how he told himself they could not possibly have been down here for decades, it certainly felt like it. But eventually he realised that the staircase they were trudging up was the last one; eventually the dim glow of his Mark brushed weak fingers against a ceiling of earth that pulled aside like a curtain at Simon’s approach. The relief of seeing the sky at last nearly made Simon collapse, even as the daylight seared his eyes like fire; he crawled out of the Bone City and laid down on the grass, indifferent to the blurry haze of figures around him, the cluttering bite of voices. His bones throbbed as he curled in on himself, his cheek pressed against dirt and leaves; he saw, as if from worlds away, Alec wrapping his arms tightly around his sister, and then Simon’s eyes were closing without his permission, helpless against the tide of exhaustion gnawing at his insides, at his brain.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Is he well?”

“What happened?”

Someone knelt beside him, touched his face, the pulse at his neck. The voices broke and crashed like surf, and when gentle fingers pried open his eye, he recognised the female Shadowhunter who had come with the Inquisitor.

“Valentine,” Jace said, heavily. “It was Valentine.”

“Can you hear me, Symeon?” the woman asked softly. “Give me a sign if you understand.”

He was too exhausted to _breathe_ , and they wanted him to speak? Simon almost started crying again. He nodded instead, once, his skull gone so thick and unwieldy he could hardly move it.

“There may yet be survivors,” the Inquisitor was saying, somewhere close by. She barked names, orders, and Simon heard what must be feet descending into the Bone City, moving quickly down those dark stairs. They had better be carrying witchlights…

The woman rolled up Simon’s left sleeve. By the time it occurred to him that he really shouldn’t be letting any of these people Mark him, the rune was almost complete, an electric warmth that pulsed gently on his forearm. Lying down, he couldn’t see it, but it sang a soft question into his body, like a dolphin’s echolocation, seeking, searching; chittering dolphin-song and sweet flutes, silvery chimes…

 _Fumana_. A diagnostic rune.

Whatever it told her must have been alarming, because she hissed under her breath and quickly traced another Mark just below it; this a bright, soaring soprano that cut through Simon’s exhaustion like sunlight through shadows. The iron bands around his chest loosened, and he almost gasped as he took his first full breath in what felt like days.

“Don’t move,” the woman told him. “And in Raziel’s name, don’t touch a stele!” She looked up, gesturing to someone outside Simon’s sight. “Jin! Watch him.”

The second of the Inquisitor’s bodyguards, the blond Asian man, took her place, and the woman disappeared. Tired still, but no longer feeling like a dandelion about to burst apart into silver fluff, Simon managed to sit up.

“Careful there,” the man said—the first time Simon had heard him speak. The Nephilim had their own accent, something Simon could only identify as somewhat European, but this man’s English bore the ghosts of a south-Asian accent instead, not the burnished Idrian lilt Simon knew from Jace and the others. An Ascended Shadowhunter, rather than a born one? Or just raised outside of Idris? “The _sila_ rune isn’t a cure, just a stop-gap. You’re not well yet.”

 _Sila._ Simon flexed his fingers and said nothing, looking around. The square garden at the heart of the cemetery was not quite full of Shadowhunters—not counting however many had gone down into the City, there were ten or fifteen men and women in full Shadowhunter gear, their black armour not uniform but tailored to their body types and, presumably, their favoured weapons and fighting styles. Where had they all come from? Simon had been under the impression that the Lightwoods were the only Shadowhunters in the state…

He was not the only one wondering; a fox had gotten caught in a corner of the garden, presumably surprised by the unexpected influx of humans before it could flee to safety. It was watching the commotion with the mien of a cat curious about the ridiculous two-legged creatures stomping about in its territory.

And it _was_ a commotion, Simon realised belatedly, his mind suddenly understanding what he was looking at, staring at. Izzy was shouting, “That’s not what happened, are you all _idiots_ , it was a _demon_ , how can you seriously think—” while her father gripped her arms and Alec was arguing, the words running together in Simon’s ears because Jace—cruel, razor-tongued Jace was standing pale and still before the Inquisitor, holding out his hands while her stele traced flames over his wrists—

 _‘Binding cuffs,’_ Luke’s voice said in his memory, and the scars on Simon’s wrists burned with the remembering, with remembered agony and hate and violation—

The loss was still so raw, still bleeding, Jace’s viciousness still ringing in his ears, _he is not yours anymore_ but nothing had ever been more irrelevant, nothing had ever mattered less, no words could cut love neatly out of your heart no matter how surgical-sharp and even if it was true, even if Jace no longer loved him it _did not matter_ , it was _extraneous_ , he saw harm about to fall on the man he loved and the paper and glass of him became adamant and diamond in a sweeping instant, the hollow space where his power had run empty exploding into a hurricane and

 _(_ Vas & cesuine & navitas _, an exquisitely elegant network of_ telesme _twining like DNA inside the stele as he reaches for it, the runes not singing but shrieking as he takes them in his mind and **rends** them, tears them into pieces bleeding broken notes)_

the stele in the Inquisitor’s hand _shattered_.

Jace recoiled as the crystal fragments flurried like snow, his half-Marked hands flying to protect his face but Simon turned the shards from him so that not a single sharp edge kissed his skin because _no,_ he would never, no move of his would be paid in Jace’s blood. But the Inquisitor—she lunged back too but not quite fast enough and Simon did nothing to shield her, a hundred crystalline splinters lacerating hands and neck and face, she cried out more in shock than pain as the incomplete runes faded from Jace’s wrists without leaving scars—

Oh, the black savagery of satisfaction, the heroin-high of vicious triumph—

But someone, some stranger, grabbed at Jace’s arm as if he might have been the cause and Simon _snarled_ , shoved off the ground and lunged to his feet without thought, barely aware of his guard’s sharp protests. A hand grabbed his own arm and Simon flung it off, grabbed the body through the hooks of its Marks and tossed it heedlessly away; there were voices then, alarm and anger and confusion and Simon wrenched at the hand grasping Jace, pulled on its runes so viciously he heard the _crack_ of broken finger-bones from across the clearing, heard the shocked scream and cared only because he felt and saw that hand retreat as if burned—

The Inquisitor was bleeding but her angle was wrong, she had not seen Simon throw Jin away without a touch and did not turn to look after the shouts of her people _(swords, so many seraph blades coming alight in Simon’s mind as they draw on him, Gamaliel Af Lahabiel Barrattiel Karael like a cloud of fireflies and as dangerous to him, how can they not understand, how do they not **see** )_. Closer to Simon the woman from earlier was talking, trying to tell him something, but he had eyes only for the Inquisitor: she spoke and _adamas_ flashed, Jace’s hands up in surrender as strangers grabbed him and forced him down, pushed him to his knees and the hurricane _howled_ , Kansas split asunder and

_(we have been here before, haven’t we, we’ve played this over and over and you never win, you are incapable of winning because you still think this is a game, IT IS NOT A GAME THIS IS WAR)_

thunder burst from Simon’s upflung hands in a shock wave, fire and lightning striking invisibly in all directions like a hail of crossbolts, laser-locked on hearts and throats; with a hundred hands he grasped the Shadowhunters all around and _hurled_ them, threw them, sent them flying, crushing seraph blades to sparkling dust and snapping steles like bones, screaming _“Leave him alone!”_ because how dare they, enough, _enough_ , Jace chose the Nephilim over Simon and this was how they repaid him, they weren’t worthy, they didn’t deserve him, how fucking _dare they_ —

“No!” Izzy and Alec were both still standing, his storm had passed over their familiar rune-songs, but it was the Inquisitor’s female guard pushing herself up off the ground, and the horror-fear in her face made no sense, fear not _of_ him but _for_ him— “Symeon, stop this, your mana—!”

He snarled at both of her, and tasted blood—

How—

The hurricane of power faltered, stuttered—

How dare they—

“Simon!” Izzy cried. She was running between her downed brethren, running towards him—

But not fast enough. The storm inside went out like a light, and his eyes rolled up, and he fell into the dark silence.

***

Isabelle pushed for a desperate burst of extra speed and caught Simon just before he hit the ground—and her whole body revolted at the sickening bonelessness of him, the limp wrongness that made her throat close with instinctive nausea. Knowledge older than her bones told her a human body should not feel like this.

He was bleeding, bleeding everywhere.

And then Syr Bellesword was there, taking him from her, lowering him to the grass as most of the other Shadowhunters were still getting to their feet, and Simon was so pale, so still, dark, almost black blood streaking his already bloodied face from every orifice as Bellesword grasped the _fumana_ Mark on his arm—she must have been the one to draw it; Izzy had seen Hodge do the same thing, clutch a _fumana_ rune to strengthen the bond between Marker and Mark, its secrets spilling directly into his mind, a palimpsest of ills and imperfections—

“Stay where you are, Morgenstern!” the Inquisitor commanded somewhere behind them, but Izzy could feel Jace pushing through the gathered Nephilim, shoving them aside with his heart in his throat, snatching frantic glimpses through Izzy’s eyes of the blood, the white stillness, Bellesword’s face as it dawned on her—

 _*No no no no no no no no no he isn’t he can’t be, those were not our last words, I gave him up, Raziel I gave him up!*_ Jace’s cry cut through their shared soul and Izzy almost gasped at the anguish in it, a wolf’s howl of grief and terror spiralling up and up and _up_ — _*Don’t do this you can’t do this you have no right **I gave him up**!*_

 _You can’t pay for lives that way,_ Izzy thought, remembering all too well the helplessness of watching Alec dying of Abbadon’s poison, the promises she’d made, and the look Jace gave her cut her to the heart—

“He’s dying,” Bellesword said, deaf to the byplay around her; she swept Simon up into her arms and almost lunged to her feet. “He needs a—”

She made it two steps. Izzy saw it—the way the woman’s face abruptly stiffened, her gaze suddenly blind, turned inward, her lips opening to scream at whatever she saw there—

And collapsed as if struck down, crumpling gracelessly, horrifyingly to the ground as if her spine had broken; Izzy lunged to catch her without thinking but Jace caught her arm—no, Alec, it was Alec looking out at her from Jace’s eyes, Alec’s voice that burst from his throat, _“Don’t touch her!”_

 _*What-why—*_ But then she knew, knew as the knowledge streaked from Alec’s mind to hers and Jace was dragging her back, away, and Alec was there, physically pushing people towards the walls and fumbling with his phone and Simon had fallen with one arm outflung and grey was spinning from his fingers, spreading like rot through the grass—

“Catherine!” Bellesword’s partner shouted, and Jace had to let go of Izzy to grab the older man instead.

“You can’t, you have to leave her,” Jace was saying, but he was the wrong person to be handing out reassurance, his own terror for Simon blinding-bright in his eyes and “She’s my _parabatai!”_ the man snapped, trying to thrust Jace aside and Isabelle blocked him, understanding his need because what if it had been Alec, what if it had been Jace? But she still couldn’t let him do it, “If you touch her you’ll _die,”_ she said urgently, and he stopped and stared at her, uncomprehending—

 _“What is going on?”_ the Inquisitor demanded, pushing through the bodies. Her face was dotted with red where the pieces of her exploding stele had cut her. “Someone explain to me—”

She froze, and Isabelle knew that she’d seen the circle of death and rot around Simon, expanding second by second towards the feet of the gathered Shadowhunters. Some, sensible enough to heed Jace and Izzy’s warnings, were stepping back, away, nervous and wary, but not enough.

“It’s the angel,” Izzy said desperately. “It’s pulling the mana out of Simon’s surroundings, you have to get everyone back!”

The Inquisitor did not stop to argue; nodding brusquely, she shouted for everyone to move as far back as possible. “How do we stop it?” she asked then, cool and brisk as a battlefield commander.

“Imogen,” her male guard pleaded, “Catherine—I can feel it, what he’s doing to her, I have to help her—!”

“Stand down, Syr Park,” the Inquisitor said sharply. “No one will approach Symeon _or_ Syr Bellesword until I am assured it is safe to do so.” She returned her well-honed gaze to Isabelle. “Well?”

Izzy opened her mouth to answer, to explain that last time Magnus had been able to contain it, that Alec was calling him now, that surely he or one of the other warlocks would be here soon—

But even as she drew breath Alec’s disbelief swept her aside, wrenched her in, she and her _agelai_ -brothers spun together like disparate currents forged into a single whirlpool and Arika’s voice was in their ear, loud and clear, and she said _“No.”_

For a moment, even their tri-faceted mind could not comprehend it.

“You don’t understand,” Sariel said urgently into the phone, after that pause, a beat, a stutter of blue screen. But they kept their voice low, unthinkingly; low enough to keep this conversation private. “There’s a Shadowhunter already caught in Simon’s pull, if you don’t come she’s going to—”

 _“—die, yes,”_ Arika said evenly. _“I am sorry. But we cannot help you.”_

A pounding in their heads, knuckles gone white as snow, as bone. Far off, the Inquisitor’s voice scraping at Isabelle’s ears, muffled, distant.

“Magnus contained Simon last time!” Hearts beating, racing, pounding bass underscoring every desperate word— “You _can_ do it, I’ve seen it—please, Arika _ashipu_ , is this because of the murders? We’re trying, we’re looking, no one is ignoring that your child died—”

At the other end of the line, Arika hissed as if struck, and Sariel’s mouth snapped shut, understanding at once that they’d overstepped.

 _“This is not revenge,”_ Arika said, after a tension-tight pause. _“It is truth. Magnus is the only one who can cast the spell you ask for. And to do so now would kill him.”_ Her voice hardened. _“I know how most of the Nephilim would balance this accounting. I know how many of your people would still ask despite the cost, and count it well-spent. Are you one of them, Alexander Sariel? Will you have me tell Magnus of your need, and spend his life like copper, and count it cheap?”_

The perfect circle of dead and dying grass around Simon had not stopped, was still growing, gulping down life like a dark, devouring mouth. It was almost four metres wide now, extending smoothly in all directions from Simon’s body; and even as Sariel watched blades of grass were shrivelling to nothing at the edges of the circle as the pull caught and drained them, turned the dirt that held their roots from healthy loam into bleached, cracked dust. If the angel’s hunger went _down_ , instead of across, would it find a subway line? A train full of mundanes? The powerlines that fed the city? And if it continued as it was doing—sending its hunger along the surface of the earth, instead of beneath it—how far could it stretch? To the edge of the garden? To the road? Further? More? How much more?

Arika was wrong. It wasn’t just one life for one. Simon—the angel in him—could take so much more than just one life if Magnus didn’t come. All the Shadowhunters here. Every one of them. Syr Bellesword would be just the first pebble in an avalanche of deaths.

Three lifetimes of training-experience-upbringing weighed on Sariel’s tongue like the bit of a bridle, the hands of a millennium’s worth of Nephilim on the reins. There was only one answer to Arika’s question, and it was not the one she wanted to hear.

“Isabelle?” the Inquisitor demanded. Then, perhaps realising who she was actually talking to; “Sariel?”

They ignored her.

Syr Bellesword was vampire-pale beside Simon. Were her cheeks sunken? Had those dark circles been under her eyes a few minutes ago?

The circle of death reached the base of the angel statue, the sentinel that stood guard over the Bone City’s entrance. Hairline fractures spread like lace over its plinth, spiderwebbing wider and wider.

The mourning runes on Alec’s body burned like brands.

Elias and Xia had died for Sariel’s incompetence. That was no agreed-upon price, no willing trade: that was a theft, two lives cut down and stolen. What right did Sariel, did _anyone_ have to demand more of the Downworld, of the Spiral Court, of Magnus? The Nephilim were already in breach of contract, the protection promised by the Accords undelivered, broken. Magnus owed them nothing.

Shadowhunters might die. But Shadowhunters were the true coins, cast and minted in steel and _adamas_ , born to be spent buying safety from the darkness. Downworlders were not.

Magnus was not. Magnus had no part in this life of death and dying—Magnus was supposed to be _immortal_ , was meant to live _forever_ , and Sariel was born to die, Shadowhunters promised their deaths to the cause long before they were ever Dedicated—but the thought of Magnus dying was like some priceless treasure desecrated and destroyed and lost to the world: the Taj Mahal reduced to rubble, Michelangelo’s David broken and shattered, Lascaux’s cave paintings graffiti’d over with slurs and gang marks. It was blasphemy to even consider it.

Magnus might be only a single coin—but that coin was a californium medallion, and no matter how Sariel set the scales in their mind, no matter how the facets of their soul spun and re-evaluated the numbers and their results, that one coin outweighed and outworthed any amount of Shadowhunter steel placed against it. 

It could not be otherwise.

“Nothing about Magnus,” Sariel whispered, “is copper. And he is not mine to spend.”

Silence from the phone.

 _“I would not have done it anyway,”_ Arika said at last. _“But I am glad you will not ask me to.”_

She hung up, then, without another word, and Sariel lowered their phone into Alec’s pocket, dazed and heartsick. Wondering if they had done the right thing, made the right decision.

If Sariel had asked—if Alec had asked—Magnus would have come. Nothing in the _agela_ -mind doubted that. They could call again, hope for Catarina to answer the phone this time, or Magnus himself. And Magnus would come.

And die. 

Every Shadowhunter here would say they had made the wrong choice. But how could they have made another?

 _“Agela_ Sariel, attend me!” the Inquisitor ordered, and finally, at last, they turned their attention to her.

“Simon’s angel is drawing on the aetheric energy of everything around him,” they said through Izzy’s mouth. “Consuming it. The edge of the circle is the extent of his reach. Step into it, or let it reach you, and he’ll start draining you too.”

“What about Catherine?” Syr Park demanded; his eyes were wild.

“How do we stop it?” the Inquisitor asked at the same time.

“It _can’t_ be stopped,” Sariel lied. “Everything touching Simon will be drained until the angel is satisfied—and if that’s not enough, everything in contact with anything touching him becomes vulnerable, on and on like links in a chain. Reach for Syr Bellesword, and you become one of those links.”

Comprehension flashed across the Inquisitor’s face like a drawn sword catching the light. “There’s no way to break the chain safely?”

There was no use pretending they had not seen this before. “Last time, Jace and Alec were caught in the drain. Isabelle caught Alec with her whip and dragged them free. But that won’t work now.” Sariel gestured towards the prone figures of Simon and Syr Bellesword. “She’s lying down. There’s no way to flick the whip so it can grab hold of her.” The ground itself would block the coils of the whip from wrapping around the Shadowhunter woman. It couldn’t be done. “Theoretically, the chain can be broken by someone fast enough to get one of the links out of reach…”

“…But that would mean entering the circle, here,” the Inquisitor finished.

Sariel nodded.

The cracks had spread to the feet of the angel statue. Magnus had said before that it was impossible to take mana from non-living things, but beneath the hem of its robe the bare toes of the stone angel began to crumble like a pillar of salt, like Lot’s wife staring into an unseeable truth, and Sariel felt the tableau of it shudder through them, a touch of ozone and ice to their threefold heart.

Raziel, fractured and breaking. Raziel, devoured and consumed. The Sator of the Nephilim race, creator and begetter, dissolving into dust and shards as Simon—the creature in Simon—drank him down like wine, and for a moment Sariel forgot all else, had eyes only for the heavy portent of it. They stared as if hypnotised and felt each fracture like a line of frost running through their own soul; there was something—some whisper of wordless dread elicited by the picture made, unintelligible but growing louder, and louder, a whisper that became a shout, and then a roar, and then a piercing _howl,_ rising not from nothing but from some depth within them, from one part of their whole—from _Jace_. As if a hammer-blow had fallen upon Jace’s facet of their bond fissures of dark horror seared like jagged lightning bolts from it, bursting black and rotten through the gemstone the _agelai_ made together, a tide of darkness sweeping through their jewel-bright light—

_*Augury harbinger omen, see the Sator fall like Lucifer, break like the wife of Lot; the ending of an age heralded. It comes like a winter storm on black wings, with rabid wolves in its train and a smile on its lips; it calls the names of the Nephilim and its words are chains about their throats, dragging them from their thrones into a vortex of tearing teeth; it walks on blood as the Christ-son walked upon the water and all the world is become its red red road—*_

And then it was gone, the sense of impending doom withdrawn like a shadow crossing the sun. In its wake Sariel came apart into three again and the Inquisitor was still talking, Syr Bellesword was still dying, and Isabelle was shaking so hard that for a moment, for the first time in her life, she thought she might be sick.

“No,” the Inquisitor was saying, to _Agela_ Sariel and to the Shadowhunters gathered around her to hear her verdict, “I will not order anyone into the circle. This is not a demon that needs slaying. Raziel’s mandate does not give me the authority to command any of you against angels.” She sounded very tired. “If anything, it bids us not interfere.”

 _Maybe we should be offering ourselves up,_ Izzy thought, a little hysterically. The echoes of what Sariel had felt—the weight and pressure of some great nameless and unnameable terror, wordless, formless, framed by the dissolving wings of the angel statue—still beat against her mind like waves against a shore. Battering her into sand. _Volunteering to feed it. Or would that be a kind of cannibalism?_ It seemed like something Simon might have wondered.

 _“NO!”_ Syr Park shouted, and for a second Izzy thought he was answering her question, but— “You can’t leave her, she’s _dying_ , Imogen, he’s killing her! I can feel it, she’s slipping away from me, please, _please_ —Catherine! _Catherine!”_

 _Dying. She’s dying._ This slow, almost gentle death—Izzy glanced over at Syr Bellesword almost without meaning to. It did not feel real. There was no immediacy to the picture the woman made, laid out on the grass. This was not how Shadowhunters died, they died quickly, in blood and darkness—not slowly and softly, sleeping in the sunshine—

But Syr Park’s frantic cries scored the _agelai_ like a sword. _If it was one of us…_ All three of them felt it like a fist around their hearts, squeezing, crushing. _Thank Raziel it isn’t one of us,_ Izzy thought guiltily.

“Let me, I’ll do it, let me go!” Syr Park struggled against Jace’s hold, and Jace was still ringing with the not-sound of whatever it was they hadn’t heard— “Please, Imogen _please_ , make them, let me, she’s _dying!”_

His voice broke like a blade snapping, metal giving way beneath unbearable pressure, and the Inquisitor’s eyes were fathomless with unfeigned grief. “This isn’t a battlefield, Sung-jin!” she said sharply. “An angel is nothing you can fight! You can only die with her!”

 _“Then let me!”_ Syr Park—Sung-jin—screamed, and his eyes were manic, rabid. “Let me, _parabatai_ , she’s my, she’s, let me _go!”_

“Restrain him,” the Inquisitor ordered heavily, gesturing for a couple of Shadowhunters to relieve Jace. “Death is the one place the _parabatai_ oath bids you not follow her,” she told Sung-jin as he shrieked like an animal, heedless, deaf to her logic—as Isabelle would have been, as Alec and Jace would have been— “Catherine would never forgive me if I let you—”

He was not listening. And as Jace relinquished his hold on the man to two older Shadowhunters, Syr Park broke free.

_“Chamuel!”_

Only the _agela_ bond gave Jace the processing speed to sway away from the diamond-flash of the man’s seraph blade in time; blood arced crimson before other Shadowhunters could react, Sung-jin whipping and snarling like a crystalline whirlwind, scattering Shadowhunters like black leaves. Hands flew to blades but everyone hesitated—Shadowhunter did not raise hand against Shadowhunter, it was bred into their bones—

In that moment of hesitation, Syr Park bolted through the crowd—towards his _parabatai_ and the circle that caged her.

“Stop him!” the Inquisitor shouted—but it was already too late, the man had already set foot on the withered grass, crossed into death without a second’s hesitation, and Izzy held her breath, hoping—hoping—

Momentum carried Syr Park forward two steps—

Three—

Four—

But it did not, could not carry him far enough.

He fell like a tree cut down, toppling to earth between one step and the next—and the angel swallowed him whole. It sucked the lustre from his hair and the colour from his skin all in an instant, turned the former brittle and grey and the latter a shade of white that belonged on nothing human; the celestial light in his seraph blade went out like a candleflame even as the sword fell from his fingers. He hit the ground knees-first with the dark leather of his gear rotting around him, cracking apart into nothingness; as his face met the dirt his clothes puffed into dust like the spores of a disturbed fungus. Izzy had a fraction of a second to glimpse the man’s naked back, his corpse-pale skin laced with shadowed veins, the rich ebony fading from his Marks like dye in bleach—and then he _collapsed_ inward, imploded, skin and flesh and bone crumbling away like an ancient parchment handled without care. A few seconds, and there was nothing left but a heap of greasy dust, a chaotic swirl of grey and brown and rust-red.

In the silence that followed, Isabelle heard a thick, struggling breath exhaled from the centre of the circle—and no inhale to follow it.

Syr Bellesword had followed her _parabatai_ into the dark, one last time.

***

Simon did not wake, but the drain stopped. No more grass died; the circle of the angel’s hunger was halted. The Inquisitor herself tested it, gingerly laying a single hand within the dark border to make sure it was done, before ordering the Shadowhunters to decamp.

They did so swiftly. An urn was found from the bloodstained Silent City for Syr Park’s remains; Robert Lightwood grimly lifted Syr Bellesword’s body into his arms. His children were the only ones willing to approach Simon’s still, pale form; Jace made to pick him up, but aborted the motion at some silent communication from his _agelai_ , backed away to let Isabelle take Simon instead. If any of the other Shadowhunters wanted to protest the gentle protectiveness with which she cradled him, they kept it to themselves.

Within minutes, the Nephilim were gone.

All but one. In the commotion of the Inquisitor’s summons no one had noticed another Shadowhunter answering the call, even one a good decade younger than the rest; their eyes had passed over his gear and Marks and accepted his presence without thought. But without friends or partners to notice his absence from the group, there was no one to miss him as he hung back in the shadows, watching one particular corner of the garden as the rest of the Nephilim left the graveyard.

When all was silent, he stepped into the sunlight; it pulled streaks of blue from his pure black hair, glinted on the hilts of his blades. He stared at the fox that had watched the events of the last few minutes as he had watched them, and gone nearly as unnoticed. “We need to talk.”

The fox spun on its paws and made to bolt, but the Shadowhunter made a sharp gesture and mid-leap copper-coloured fur burst apart into skin and fabric. A crimson whirlwind of claws and tail coalesced into a young Korean woman left gasping for breath on her hands and knees in the grass.

“Shadowhunter,” she said through gritted teeth. Her eyes burned as she got to her feet, brushing off the knees of her jeans. “How did you do that?”

He smiled coldly. “Your people aren’t the only ones with secrets, Lightbringer.” The smile vanished. “What are the Messengers of Inari doing in New York? This isn’t your territory.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the woman said.

“And I don’t have time for games, so I’ll make this simple for you: stay away from Symeon Morgenstern.” His eyes were black ice on a midnight road. “He’s not your concern.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “If you know about the Lightbringers, then you know Symeon _is_ our concern,” she said, changing tack on a dime. “Or do you not know what _it_ is?”

“I know exactly what he is,” the man said. _Better than you_ was unspoken, but rang clear as crystal.

The fox-woman eyed him coolly, speculatively. “Do you?” she asked after a considering pause. “I doubt it. If you did, you would not have left it breathing. You have your duties to the world, too, don’t you? That creature is a living violation of your mandate. It will bring a second Flood if it’s not put down. I can promise it.”

 “Better get your swimsuit ready, then,” the Shadowhunter commented idly. He was inspecting his nails, a satire of boredom.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not a levelled-up Nephilim, Shadowhunter. Whatever that creature may look like to you, it isn’t a holy son of Raziel. It’s a monster worse than anything you’ve ever faced!”

“I’ll thank you not to assume you know what I’ve faced.” He looked up from his fingers. “Are you done? Then I have a promise to exchange for yours, little kitsune: touch him, and die. It’s that simple. I don’t care about your reasoning; I don’t even care about the world. Hurt him, and I’ll kill you. _Try_ to hurt him, and I’ll kill you. Every last one of you, if I have to.”

She raised her eyebrows with contempt. “Do you think that scares me?”

The Shadowhunter smiled, the curve of his lips a reaper’s scythe. “It should.”

“Why?”

She was fishing for information, and he tossed her a bite. “Because I’m not a levelled-up Nephilim either.” And he made a fist.

Like a doll of wet clay, she was suddenly compressed inwards and down; pain sheared across her face, but even as she opened her mouth to scream she was silenced, lips elongating into a coppery muzzle, russet fur bursting from her skin and clothes, ears moving up her skull and sharpening to arrowhead points. She fell to the ground and landed a fox, weak-legged and trembling, her human scream become a vulpine whine of distress.

The Shadowhunter loosened his hand. “Tell your commander to leave Symeon alone. There is no ‘or else.’”

He didn’t wait to see the fox’s fur stand all on end, or hear its low growl of acknowledgement. He simply turned on his heel and left, as swiftly and silently as he had come.

Moments later, a small red fox disappeared in the other direction.

***

_Hunger._

_HungerhungerhungerHUNGER._

_Starving. Famished. VOID._

_He is a black hole thinly sheathed in skin and he is gulping down stars, clawing them from the firmament and into his mouth, shoving them in in desperate, ravenous handfuls. They go down easy as pomegranate seeds and they taste so good, so perfect, like fresh-baked brownies just out of the oven and crisp apples and Mrs Lewis’ roast salmon and nothing like any of those, more and better and beyond similes—but he hardly tastes them at all, he doesn’t have time to taste and savour them, the hunger is SCREAMING and it feels like bleeding as he weeps from the pain, from the need, stuffing himself full and smearing electromagnetic radiation all over his chin, astronomical light dripping from his lips and hands as he reaches for more, and more, and MORE—_

_He swallows over and over and they plunge down into the dark inside him, constellations of them, asterisms of stars, and the space around him dims as the emptiness within him brightens, lightens, fills bit by bit. The howling agony of starvation’s sharp edges grow dull, soothed and smoothed out; gradually his core turns from black hole to stellar nursery, the brilliance of a thousand stars driving away the famished shadows. One last lozenge of silvery fire flares suddenly within his reach and he snatches at it, drags it hungrily to his mouth and_ bites _—swallows—_

_It tastes like cedar smoke and honey and pineapple—and then the hunger is gone. The pain stops._

_He can breathe._

_He licks the starlight from his fingers, trembling with satiation, with relief and rich, heady pleasure. The shining smears explode on his tongue, champagne and sugar._

_When the last of it is gone he stands still, panting a little after gorging himself so full. He’s just straightened up to take a look around—only just beginning to realise that this is nowhere he should be, nowhere in the world he knows—when a pulse of golden light flashes away from him._

_It bursts out of his chest and flies away into the darkness, and he feels it go, a faint throb of sensation, painless but indescribably strange—and then there’s another. And another, and another, regular as a heartbeat, each one tracing the same path from his solar plexus away into the pitch-blackness, each one briefly illuminating Simon and the blankness of his surroundings before darting away._

What the—?

 _With each successive throb of light the path leading out of him becomes clearer, becomes a little more defined. At first it only glitters on the edge of invisibility; then it gleams, like a mirror in mist suddenly reflecting fire. And then it’s as solid as light can be, clear as a laser, a shining rope anchored in Simon’s chest and tied to—to something else, something Simon can’t see or sense out in the darkness. He almost can’t be afraid; it’s so_ beautiful _, a radiant cord of sunlight and starlight, topaz and diamond, citrine and opal, blazing like flames but smooth-edged as silk, pulled so taut it ought to hurt—but it doesn’t. There’s no pain, just a distinct palpitation when each flare of light goes out of him, a kind of_ pull _, a tug, as whatever the light is is drawn from his body._

 _But he is afraid, still, despite how pretty it is, despite the lack of pain. What in Kal-el’s name_ is _it?_

_Gingerly, he reaches for the point where it vanishes into his chest—it does not give beneath his fingers, and his hand doesn’t pass through it like a hologram. It’s solid, with a texture like velvet-sheathed wire, softness over an unbreakable core. He can just about wrap his hand around it; it’s as warm as something full of blood, something living._

_Wondering-hoping he can just rip it out like a weed, he_ yanks _._

 _It’s like wrenching on his soul: he feels it in everything he is, every cell of him screaming a frantic protest and he reverberates like a gong struck by Mjölnir as the rope of light_ hums _, quivering like a plucked harp-string and_ singing _a crystalline note that resounds in the dark, a sound as full of and as rich with meaning as rune-song—_

 _It means_ life _—_

 _It means life, and the reverberations fill him up, fills_ everything _to bursting-shattering; it’s like an earthquake in his mind, everything shaking and shaking and all his trains of thought thrown from their rails by the convulsions. His bones are wind-chimes caught in a storm, pealing and pealing, that sound flooding everything, every space he has, sweeping everything else away like the wave that drowned Atlantis. All he knows is the song, all he can feel is its music playing over his ribs and drumming in his skull, the pulsing tug of light flowing away from him into the golden-opal rope like blood through an umbilical cord—_

***

In a flowershop in downtown Manhattan, a young man in the midst of arranging lavender, sunflowers and Asiatic lilies into a bouquet for a customer suddenly froze mid-word.

“Are you all right?” the woman asked after a beat, alarmed by his very strange expression—but even as she spoke his eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled, falling bonelessly and suddenly to the floor.

The lily in his hand fell with him like an offering into a grave.

***

_It does not, cannot echo in this place without walls. Gradually the sound dies away, and the terrible convulsions of his soul-Self-mind ease, stilling slowly. Bit by bit he stops feeling like a manic toddler’s xylophone. It could be seconds or hours before silence reigns again, before the after-effects of that wrenching pull fades; the cord gives light, but there is no way to tell time or its passing, no way to know how long this feeling lasts._

_Finally, though, his mind stops vibrating. Finally he’s able to think again, and remember his name, remember to be afraid. He lets go of the light-rope at once, thinking_ umbilical cord _, thinking_ it’s feeding on me, whatever’s at the other end is feeding on me like a leech—

_The bond vibrates again—and not because he touched it._

_Because someone else did._

_Terror rams like an icicle through his heart; with nothing pulling on the cord he doesn’t drown in the music this time—but there’s something there, there’s something_ out there _in the dark tied to him in gold and silver and he doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t know what he’s tied to, but nothing in the last few weeks suggests it’s going to be good._

Monster, nightmare, no no go RUN!

_Except there’s nowhere to go, and no way to hide with this rope of light blazing a path directly to his heart for anyone and anything to follow, and the pulses of light-life-energy are leaving him faster, faster and faster, why are they doing that, what does it mean, what is he supposed to DO—_

_He thinks it’s a trick of his eyes at first, the distant glow. But it comes closer—swiftly, like a streaking star—and no. No, it’s no illusion, it’s not his imagination._

_It’s—_

_It’s a—_

_It’s the other end of the bond._

_The cord is strobing now with the quick beats of light flashing down its length, leaving Simon, and he thinks of a wound, thinks of bleeding light into the dark as the creature on the other end comes close enough to see, comes close enough to be painted by the glow of the rope joining it to Simon but even before that he is jerking away, jerking back. Because the instinct of that Other inside him says_ demon _even before he can make out the feathers, the skull, the claw-jewelled fingers and Simon’s fear catches and comes alight, white and gold fire leaping to his hands and wreathing his wrists in burning bracelets—_

_But then it stops him. That inner instinct, that wordless voice, the thing inside him that has always reacted to demonkind with white-out revulsion-rage stops him in his tracks, catches him like a moth in amber._

_Because there is no blinding fury as the demon comes into the light of the fire. Only a near-painful bolt of joy._

_Simon can’t move, he wants to run but that inner It won’t let him, has him locked in place like a lodestone. The demon is, it looks—it looks almost human, like the Greater Demons did, but where they were giants this one is Simon-sized, a biped without tentacles or spines or a scorpion tail to make his gorge rise. But its face is a skull’s, an avian skull, gleaming like mother-of-pearl where the firelight kisses it and too large to belong to any bird Simon knows, surrounded by a dark mane thick as smoke. Abbadon wore nothing and Abigor wore armour, but this one wears a cloak of feathers that spills around it like a storm, and the rope of light that binds the creature to Simon catches gleams of green and blue in them._

_Every throb of the bond sends a pulse of soul-stuff from Simon into this thing. It’s feeding on him. There’s—it’s—the demon is_ feeding on him _, sucking the light from him, and Simon has to struggle not to be_ happy _about it, the Other inside him is so damned_ happy _about it, what—_

_The demon moves, and Simon flinches—but the hand adorned with delicate-deadly claws reaches not for him, but for the edge of its own forehead. It pulls, and skull and mane both slide away, come free in its hand and Simon understands what he’s looking at even as the demon’s true face is revealed—the terrible visage was only a headdress, and beneath it is a face as human-seeming as his own, all dark ebon-gold skin stretched over bones like spun steel, fine and sharp and strong. Its hair tumbles down around it like a winter wind, like a fog of silk, longer than another cloak; white as milk and snow and the glare of sunlight on clear water, and as if in contrast its eyes are dark, slitted black pupils against white irises against black sclerae._

_And none of it is as terrifying as the wary wonder in its face as it stares at Simon._

“Adokaz-Aoi,” _it breathes, and even the harsh snarl of the twisted Enochian demons speak can’t disguise the prayerful tone, the relief and longing and delight that touches ice to the back of Simon’s teeth, runs heat down his spine that has nothing to do with the fire in his hands._

 _He starts when the demon suddenly folds, dropping down to its knees like a sword into its sheath; its wings fold and flatten like Abigor’s did all those weeks ago, a gesture whose poignancy catches in Simon’s throat: submission, respect, an honouring._ (Do demons have honour?) _The mask is let go, and it falls away into the darkness as if into water, but the demon lays its hands down flat as if there is solid ground beneath its palms. Its head bows low._

_“You called,” it says, its face hidden in the silver spill of its hair. “And I came.”_

_Except that’s not quite it, the word the demon uses is_ anjedshhazekt _and its meaning tumbles through Simon like an avalanche in all its layers of intimacy/loyalty/service, its tangles of past- and present-tense: more_ I come _than_ I came, I heard _**and** _ I hear _both, with the implications therein. It is a word that means_ I rise _, both_ to your call _and_ to your hand _, like a vassal, like a sword; it means_ I am reborn/renewed by your will _,_ reborn **into** your will _, and that is…_

_From a demon? That is unbelievably disturbing, even nauseating, and the horrific implications rend like shrapnel through Simon’s stunned thoughts._

_Especially because the Other inside him seems anything but disturbed._

_“I didn’t,” he answers in the same language, more harshly than he meant to—more harshly than is probably wise. He takes a step back, raising his flame-cuffed hands in a warding gesture. With effort, he forces the words out in English, and not the splintered, bastardised Fallen Enochian that sits on his tongue like hot lead, eager as blood to be spilled. “I didn’t call you!”_

_The demon looks up at him, and its face is human but inhuman, unhuman, and Simon cannot read it at all. “You called me through the_ lilnilipah,” _it contradicts him, and its voice is a parrying sword, catching Simon’s certainty-wish-will and knocking it back. Simon almost stumbles: the word means_ blood _and_ branch _and_ living breath _, and he understands instantly that this is the name for the cord of light that binds this demon to him. “Do you not know me,_ Adokaz?”

_Prince. It names him prince, like the demons in his vision did, like the voice in his head, like the monster he found in the Silent City._

_Prince._

_“No,” Simon says, before he can think better of it, before he can realise all the ways in which it might be better, safer, to play along. And there are many, so many: if this creature has mistaken him for someone_ (something) _else, what might it do if Simon denies it, unveils himself as not the one he’s thought to be?_

(Or, worse—

—what if he is _exactly_ who _((what))_ the demon thinks he is?)

_But he thinks of all the reasons to lie too late. “I don’t know you,” he insists, and readies himself, as best he can, for anger, for confusion, for attack. “How could I—why should I?”_

_The demon smiles, suddenly, and it is not an attack but it tears at Simon like one, not least because it is a smile too full of teeth, shard-sharp and glittering like splinters of opal. A mouth full of jewels._

(Not least because, for a moment, Simon could swear the strangeness of the demon’s face makes sense to him, and that in it he reads sadness, sadness and resignation and a breath-taking, heart-stopping tenderness—)

_And then it all flies right out of Simon’s mind as the demon says, “Your mother sent me.”_

***

When the message came from the Silent City, the Inquisitor had commandeered a car from the werewolf pack she, Alec, and Syr Park had been interviewing—only the first of the four packs in this canton, but the moment Alec had walked into their packhouse he’d known they’d found the family of the missing child. The grief and barely-suppressed hatred they’d turned on the Shadowhunters had been raw as burns; the guilt Alec chased it down with seared like salt.

_Our fault. My fault. I should have stopped this._

Syr Park had driven them to the graveyard that was the Silent City’s entrance while his commander messaged Alicante for support. An emergency Portal had met them by the statue of Raziel and deposited twenty-one Shadowhunters at the Inquisitor’s feet, ready for orders.

There was no way to get them all back to the Institute in the werewolves’ car. The seriously injured—of which there were only two—crammed in alongside _Agela_ Sariel in the back of the car while the rest walked.

It was a car meant for ferrying a family around; there was room. But Sariel noticed nothing, not the foreign Shadowhunters, or the Inquisitor, or the sudden, awful lack of Syrs Bellesword and Park. They only watched Simon’s face, and his breathing, and his slow, steady pulse.

There didn’t seem to be anything else in the world.

But at some point, the Inquisitor must have sent a message ahead somehow, because when they reached the Institute it was swarming with unfamiliar Nephilim.

Sariel stopped just inside the door, momentarily bewildered by the crush of people. They had never seen so many Nephilim in their home before, not even for Max’s _jääydin_ -confirmation; there were Shadowhunters assembled in black and gleaming gear, runecasters in garnet and vellum, alchemists in armour-tight ruby and ebony lugging their signature carrying cases—even members of the scholar-caste, with the pins of their knowledge shining steel or pearl or jade at the throats of dove-grey robes shot with silver.

Scholae wore different emblems to denote their areas of scholarship, the subject of their knowledge and expertise. Those who worked with the Merchant-Adventurers wore bronze globes with the mundane lands gilded, for their knowledge of the Light World; historians had the triple-knot, the triquetra, to denote the interwoven fluidity of history; and scholae who had studied the cultures of the Downworlder peoples wore the warlocks’ star, the luna moth of the fae, the werewolves’ crescent, or the vampires’ ankh pinned to their collars—sometimes all four. But all the scholae Sariel could see—all of whom immediately tried to swarm the Inquisitor—were wearing the same sign, one the _agela_ had only ever seen in the Codex; a golden key, winged with the six pennons of a seraph, each one carved from flawless _adamas_. The crest of the Secretseekers, the _secretari_ —the angelologists. 

For a single second, caught clear in time as snow and glass, Sariel thought _we should run_. Simon was in their arms, and they were barely inside the door; they could turn now and be gone in a beat of their synced hearts—

And go where? With what resources? The Inquisitor would have the Lightwood accounts frozen the moment she realised they were gone. The only place they could go that they might actually reach was Magnus’ home, and they had no right to bring the wrath of the Clave down on him. Especially when he was sick, and maybe dying…

It only took a moment to consider, hardly a breath, and then there were authoritative figures gathered around, reaching for Simon as though they had the right, and Sariel reacted faster than thought, stepped the Izzy-body back and the Alec- and Jace-bodies forward, reversing the arrowhead formation, putting the bulk of their muscle between these strangers and their _parastathentes_ —

One of the men slapped Alec on the shoulder.

Or tried; he probably meant only to break their skindancing, to make them startle apart into three minds again, but Sariel caught the man’s wrist and twisted, shoved, bared their teeth in protectiveness cubed by itself, a triple-spiral grown thorns and claws, _*Secretseekers Secretseekers Secretseekers here for him here for Simon they mustn’t they can’t he is ours YOU CAN’T HAVE HIM—*_

 _“Agela_ Sariel, stand down!” the Inquisitor commanded, sweeping into view. There were still specks of blood on her face and hands. “There is no time for this; Symeon must be examined, and now. _Now.”_

It was true. Simon still hadn’t woken up, and there was no Magnus this time to cast healing spells. Sariel couldn’t help him, wasn’t helping him by keeping him out of the healers’ hands…

“Get Catarina _ashipu,”_ they said with Izzy’s voice. It emerged rough from her throat. “She’s a magical healer. She can examine him.”

The Inquisitor gave them an incredulous look that quickly shaded into anger. “Allow a _Downworlder_ to lay hands on an angel’s vessel? No. _One more word,”_ she said icily as Sariel opened Alec’s mouth to speak, “and I will have you all _stripped_. _”_

Did she mean it? Would she do it? Break an _agela_?

_To protect an angel’s vessel? Yes._

Which meant they had no choice, because unMarked and cast out they would be no help to anyone. Certainly not Simon.

And yet giving up Simon’s weight was like carving out their lungs; his head lolled as they handed him over, and despite having just seen him wreak destruction like an avenging angel less than twenty minutes ago—the Inquisitor’s stele turning to shrapnel in her hand, dozens of seraph blades exploding like crystal grenades, Shadowhunters flying through the air like flung dolls—he looked fragile and defenceless in the arms of the woman who took him from them.

She handled him like a holy relic, careful and reverent. It did not make Sariel feel better.

They watched him be whisked away by physicians with _adamas_ torques around their necks and _adamas_ rings shining on their fingers. Like Shadowhunters, the caste of healers wore hunting black—but where Shadowhunters hunted to kill, physicians hunted through harm and illness to bring their patients back to health. These were the true medics of the Nephilim, far greater in their skill than Hodge had ever been with his simples and tonics, and it was good that they were here. If anyone could care for Simon now, they could.

But the Secretseekers followed them up the stairs, and Sariel had known, of course on some level they had known the _secretari_ were here for Simon, that nothing but the golden glory of an angel could tear the hunters of secrets from their ziggurat—but still the _agela_ had to root themselves to the ground like stone so as not to chase after them and steal Simon from beneath their sight—

 _“Agela_ Sariel,” the Inquisitor snapped, drawing them back to their own predicament, to her hard, speculative eyes. Hers was the expression of an experienced Shadowhunter weighing up an unfamiliar weapon, cold and judging and wary. “You will come with me. I will have your report on the events in the Silent City now, and then Janim Sariel will be confined until the Silent Brothers are able to accommodate him again. Any knowledge you have of Symeon’s…situation—”

One of the Secretseekers appeared suddenly at her side, the diamond-bright pin at her throat ablaze against her Mediterranean skin. “Inquisitor,” she said, and it was like facing an unknown demon for the first time, seeing one of the scholae interrupt the High Inquisitor without hesitation, with assured impunity, “Secretar Miracle requests your presence in the Infirmary.”

 _‘Request’ my blessed ass,_ Clary would have said, Sariel thought, watching the incredulity-edged frustration flash across the Inquisitor’s face.

It was quickly suppressed. “Of course,” the Inquisitor said. She shot Sariel a look that might have come from a crossbow, but when she spoke it was to the Shadowhunters around them, the ones more unequivocally under her command. “Confine _Agela_ Sariel in whichever room they wish. I want them under guard until I can interview them myself. Give them whatever they ask for, but they are not to speak to their parents.”

She turned on her heel to follow the scholar—then paused. “And take their steles,” she added briskly.

Sariel drew breath sharply in shock; they were not the only ones. Several of the surrounding Shadowhunters hissed or outright gasped, if softly. To take a Nephilim’s stele was to leave them defenceless, unable to draw the Marks that were their birthright, the runes that could save them should the darkness reach for their life. It was tantamount to stripping their Marks outright, albeit usually more temporary, and very nearly taboo.

It was not murder to kill someone for trying to steal your stele.

 “Their steles, High Inquisitor?” someone asked tentatively.

“Do not make me repeat myself,” the Inquisitor said coldly, and her voice was such a bitter winter wind that several people flinched.

The Secretseeker coughed delicately into her fist, and Sariel marvelled at her daring even as apprehension weighed like lead in their bellies—for the Inquisitor turned away to follow the other woman without any more hesitation, not waiting to see her orders carried out.

When the _secretari_ called, even the High Inquisitor came running. That was worse than Sariel had feared.

But without the pressure of the Inquisitor’s presence, the _agela_ ’s synergy dissolved like sugar in water and they stood dazed for a too-long instant, dizzy and disorientated to be three minds again.

As if to take advantage of that momentary vulnerability, a dark-haired Shadowhunter stepped forward with a slightly apologetic air but a firm expression. “I will take your steles, please, _Agela_ Sariel. Where would you prefer to be confined?”

***

 _“My_ mother?”

 _For a single, amber-enclosed instant, hope as wild and desperate as Pandora’s floods Simon like helium and fire, a white roar so glorious he hardly feels its burn. The flames in his hands are snuffed out like an afterthought as his heart leaps, his mind going instantly to a bare white hospital room, his mom silent and still and surrounded by machines arrayed like a queen’s handmaidens. For a millisecond, his breath is broken by questions:_ is she awake, is she okay, is she, is she, is she—?

_And then reality comes rushing back, sure as the tide._

_He thinks:_ demons lie. _He thinks:_ she would never traffic with demons.

 _He thinks:_ that’s not what **Exestanser-a-jeqaaonzx** means.

 _And it’s not. Not quite. It’s a term with interlocking meanings, something like_ Empress _or maybe_ Creatrix _, a title like a crown, a goddess’ epithet. It means_ Mother of All _but it’s possessive too, that_ –jeqaaonzx _ending forges a relationship between the Mother and Simon. Makes it_ your Mother.

Your mother.

Your Queen, your goddess, the-one-who-birthed-you— _if Enochian had concepts like ‘birthed’, or any understanding of binary genders, for that matter. ‘Mother’ is just as close as English can come. ‘Father’ would work as well…and be just as incorrect._

The-one-from-whom-you-came-forth _, maybe._ Who-created-you _, for a given definition of ‘create’—organic, spiritual, divine, with-love. As far from the sterility of test-tubes and laboratories as one can get._

_Creatrix. Empress. Primogenitrice. Monarch and parent._

_Enochian, even the demonic form, is extremely concise._

_Whatever it is, it’s not a term that could possibly refer to Jocelyn Fairchild, and the disappointment of that is—equal and opposite to that flare of hope. Sick, crushing misery, and it’s only by the skin of his teeth that Simon keeps himself from collapsing into exhausted, hurt-child tears._

_This, here, is not a safe time to break down and cry. His mom would not want him to mourn her now. She’d want him to stay alive, and that means not letting himself be distracted from the fact that there’s a frickin’_ demon _in front of him, addressing him,_ wanting _something of him._

“Exestanser-a-darzga--lok-drilpaxk _, (First-and-Greatest of the Four) Mother of All, yes,_ Adokaz-Aoi,” _the demon says, as if Simon’s question was a real one, and not an exclamation of disbelief._

 _It’s taken so long for Simon to struggle through a translation of the term—title—that it’s actual_ meaning _only hits him belatedly, only hits him now: this is some kind of demon queen they’re talking about, a demon_ deity _, the kind of monster that makes Simon sick to imagine. He_ can’t _imagine it, it’s incomprehensible, Abigor was bad enough and it was only a prince; the_ Exestanser-a-darzga--lok-drilpaxk _is an Infernal **god(dess)** , and Simon wants to stop and think about the theological implications but he’s too fucking terrified because whatever it is _wants him _, has sent a, a—_

_What?_

_“Why?” Simon snarls, terror transmuted to some semblance of fury by a trickster’s alchemy, and it’s fool’s gold but it glitters when flames lick around his wrists again, fill his hands like coins to buy an illusion of safety, of mastery, of defensibility. “Why did_ par _—”_

 _He stops, appalled, because the word came easy as breath and he understands what he should have long ago but never stopped to consider: demons aren’t_ it _._ Par _is—it’s like ‘they’, kind of, it’s the pronoun you use when you don’t know someone’s—a_ demon’s _—gender, and Simon feels sick with it, this bombshell of a revelation forcing him to acknowledge that demons are_ people _._

_Because of course they are._

_They have language, they have hierarchy, they have craft (he thinks of Abigor’s Infernal blade,_ parz _armour, of demon smiths forging both), they have fucking_ pronouns _—_

 _The Nephilim call them ‘it’ and Simon adopted that without thinking, because why_ wouldn’t _the world mimic the black and white morality of his RPGs and fantasy novels, because demons just_ are _evil, monsters, of course they are, they_ kill people _—_

 _But has anybody ever asked them_ why?

(You can’t have it both ways, either demons are beasts, are ‘it’, _or_ they’re evil—it can’t be both, the tiger that kills a human isn’t evil, only people can be evil, evil is something you have to _choose_ —)

_“Why did par send you?” Simon whispers. Reeling, sickened, confused._

_The demon’s pupils dilate into huge, deep circles, then contract to goat-sharp slits again. “Nii sent me because I am the Sword’s Shield,” par says, and there is again that moment of comprehension, an instant where parz body language and tone and facial expression combine into sense, into something Simon can see and understand; hunger, and yearning, and something bittersweet as honeyed wormwood. “But a seeker was needed because you were lost,_ Adokaz-Aoi _, Prince of Stars. Because Jocelyn Fairchild broke her promise to the_ Enaikat _—the King of Kings, the Lord of All Legions, the Venom of the Void. She broke her oath to Samael, and so I am come, to guard and to guide and to serve.”_

***

Clary was still kicking herself for oversleeping when she realised that there was no way Simon and the Lightwoods would be holding Saturday-morning training in the Institute now. They had their very own training room in their very own apartment, and why would they bother coming all the way across town and risk running into their horrible parents, when they could just go downstairs?

Unfortunately, _that_ little gem only occurred to her as she was leaving the subway station.  The sunlight slapped her in the face, and the temporal illumination came with a side-dish of the mental kind.

Goddess damn it.

She sighed and glanced at her phone. She’d called Simon twice to apologise for being late, but he hadn’t picked up, and while it was always hit and miss whether you could find signal in the subway, now that she was out of it her phone was listing no missed calls. Which probably meant they were already sparring, because you didn’t take your phone into the training room unless you wanted to risk it getting smashed when somebody kicked your hip right over your pocket.

She put the phone away—and froze.

The Institute was a very short walk from this entrance to the subway, so short that Clary privately suspected Nephilim influence in arranging it—why _wouldn’t_ the Shadowhunters have leaned on the human government to make sure they had a subway station close by their home base, when it was, to be fair, way more important that _they_ be able to get around the city quickly than pretty much anyone else who would be using it? But what that meant right now was that Clary had no trouble at all seeing from here that the street outside the Institute was full of Shadowhunters.

 _Full._ Of Shadowhunters.

Most of them looked quite weary; more than half of them had drying blood on their black leathers. One was clutching some kind of pot or urn to her chest as the whole bedraggled-looking group trekked up towards the Institute from the other direction, some speaking to their neighbours in low voices and some not speaking at all. There were more people, presumably also Nephilim, waiting for them; a flurry of men and women whose black clothes were flowing tunics and trousers instead of hunting armour and who wasted no time beginning to check pulses and eyes, brandishing their steles like magic wands. One of them whisked the urn away, and the Shadowhunters were swiftly ushered into the Institute.

Clary turned and vanished back into the subway station, her mind whirling. Her thoughts flew to the unknown Shadowhunter at the club last night; was he a part of this, whatever _this_ was? And if so, did he know who she was—in which case, Simon and his friends were even more _royally screwed_ than they might already be—or had he just been trying to help a mundane girl who meant nothing to him?

Given what she knew of the Nephilim, she thought that unlikely.

And what was ‘this’? Why were there Shadowhunters here? Had the Lightwood parents called them in? For what? Kore, that had been _blood_ on their gear—red, mortal blood, she was sure of it, nothing like the gunk Abbadon had bled—and sunlight _killed_ demons, what could Shadowhunters be hunting _in the middle of the day?_

In the middle of the day, and with a small army. She’d seen Jace practising—Izzy—even Alec, once or twice. She couldn’t imagine anything bad enough that it would need that many fully-trained, adult Shadowhunters to take it out—

Oh Kore, _why_ hadn’t Simon answered her calls?

Scrambling onto the subway platform, Clary threw herself on the first train to arrive—and despite the _no signal_ icon in the corner of her phone’s screen, she couldn’t stop herself from dialling Simon’s number.

Again.

And again.

And again.

***

_Demons lie._

_Demons LIE._

_Simon all but screams that truism to himself, but it is still drowned out by the cataclysm of horror that answers the Sword’s Shield—_ Kashtokaz _, is the word, a title and a name in one and Simon doesn’t CARE because his mom—_

_His mom—_

Oh God what if it was never Valentine, what if it was HER, what if whatever’s wrong with me is something SHE DID—

No, it can’t be, that’s crazy, she wouldn’t, she’d never, she didn’t she didn’t she didn’t—

_Not his mom, not Jocelyn, bravest strongest smartest BEST person he’s ever met, ever known, ever dreamed of—_

_Demons lie demons lie demons LIE!_

She was so determined to keep you from the Shadow World she cut your Sight out of you, _a voice whispers beneath the screaming._ She told you nothing, prepared you not at all, when you came to her with visions in your eyes she was going to run out of the city with you rather than let you face them.

What if she was not afraid of what the Shadow World might do to you, but of what you might do to the world?

_But no, Valentine **admitted** it was him—‘Because of what you did to me!’ Simon had shouted at him, all those months ago in Renwicks. ‘ **Because you did something to me** , to make me like this, didn’t you?’_

_And Valentine said, he said—_ ‘Ol gi eol drilpá.’

I made you great.

**_I_ ** _, not **she** , it **was** Valentine, it WAS—_

That doesn’t mean she didn’t know. It doesn’t mean she made no promise _._

 _Simon struggles against too much, so much, trying desperately to make sense of it, to weigh the possibilities, the worth of a demon’s word against a lifetime of love and trust. Samael, who-what is that—he thinks of the Destroyer of Hope from the_ Wheel of Time _books, the Desolate One from_ Hellboy; _it’s a name that means_ monster _, the embodiment of evil, isn’t he the one people mix up with Satan, isn’t he—?_

 _Simon thinks of Neil Gaiman, of_ Sandman _, of Lucifer’s name before the Fall._

_…Isn’t he the Devil?_

_The idea of his mom making a deal with the Devil should be laughable, but Simon isn’t laughing. He can’t remember what the urge to laugh even feels like._

_He can’t remember how to breathe._

_There are so many questions dive-bombing through his head like magpies in swooping season, sharp tearing screeching questions, he can’t catch any to ask them, can’t choose, can’t—_

_“If you will have me,” the demon continues, and the longing in parz voice strums some chord in Simon’s chest, some taut wire drawn between his ribs._

_The music it makes sets a snare around his throat, like a choke-collar, like a noose of velvet. Yearning swells like a waxing moon behind his collarbone, unexpected and inexplicable and distantly horrifying; he sways with it, breathless, caught, hooked. Balancing on a razor’s edge._

_Until the Other in him throws him off the ledge._

_He crumbles like a pillar of sand before a wave, dissolving, will and fear and horror all dispersing as his knees hit the not-ground (which is soft as silicone, which yields like padded velvet under him), and his hand is reaching out without his will_ (with all of it) _, he watches it happen like something in a dream_ (like one he’s dreamed a thousand times) _. The flames braceleting his wrist flicker out like eyelashes falling shut as they draw close, but not before Simon sees—_

_Sees the demon’s face change where the light of Simon’s fire falls on it, like dirt wiped away from the surface of a mirror. Sees parz jaw and cheek and eye rewrought in gleaming, fluid silver, rippling like water, like light; beautiful and exquisite, terrible and alien. Nothing like parz human-esque face at all, more like—_

_More like—_

(He can’t remember, it’s on the tip of his tongue, something he dreamed once, something he almost knows—)

_And then the flames are gone, as though the Other that lives behind his heart can’t bear to burn parn, and the scintillating silver strangeness is gone with them as Kashtokaz turns into his palm, pressing into his hand with a look of relief, of pain, of the same bruise-sweet yearning Simon can feel reverberating through himself like a star bleeding its cold and perfect light through darkness._

_The_ lilnilipah _throbs like a heart, and Simon almost thinks he can feel whatever’s being taken—whatever he is_ giving _—as it enters the demon’s chest, like sharing breath, like another heart echoing his._

(Do demons have hearts?)

 _Simon looks at himself and wonders where the horror is, can’t understand what he’s_ doing _but can’t pull his hand away. Is it only that this demon looks so human, is Simon’s brain tricking him into empathising with something that cannot be empathised with—?_

_Or is it—?_

_Is it more_ (worse) _than that?_

_What is this bond between them, what does a demon goddess WANT with him, what did Jocelyn promise, what—?_

_Why—_

(It is like glass vibrating before it breaks.)

_“My Kashtokaz,” Simon murmurs, and it is his voice but not, someone else’s words shaping his lips, longing-loving-ardent—_

(Oh, God, he almost remembers—)

_And Simon realises that the touch of this demon is not burning him._

_He whips his hand away as if it_ is _burnt, the words like embers on his lips, searing, terrible, horrifying. This is not—he is not—he doesn’t understand, he can’t make sense of it, what_ is _this, what is_ he _, what is going_ on _—_

 _It is too much, and he reacts as Jace has been so careful to train him to; Simon lunges backwards and up and_ bolts _, turns on his heel and in a centisecond he is running, he is—_

(Is there even anywhere to run in this dark place, is there anywhere he can go that the _lilnilipah_ will not immediately reveal, where is he, how does he _WAKE UP_ —)

_He is surrounded._

_Demons fill the darkness like salt fills the sea, countless, limitless, closed in a circle like a noose around him. Simon spins in place and his hands fill again with fire, the light showing him scales and carapaces and dark fur, toxic spines and lashing tails and dripping slime, a wall of the Infernal in every direction—there are so many, so many, not tens of them but hundreds, thousands, a slithering-writhing-hissing ocean of horror in the dark—_

_He waits for the atom-bomb fury to erupt in his mind-heart-blood, the sun-death hatred that will demand he annihilates them all, the instinct-compulsion deeper than thought or words or bone that drove him like a tsunami against Abbadon, Abigor, the demon in the Bone City—_

_But it doesn’t come._

_It doesn’t come and without it there is only oh-so-human fear thick as slurry, without it he is helpless, the flames glittering on his hands won’t go far and he doesn’t even have a seraph blade, Simiel is so far away,_ he is going to die here _—_

(Mom Clary Jace I’m **sorry—** )

_A clawed hand touches his shoulder and he whirls, his burning hands coming up in a defensive gesture and the terror honed into a snarl, because he may go down but he will go down fighting, he will take as many of them as he can with him—but the demon, the one who knelt, who put parz cheek into his hand, is not attacking._

_“Don’t fear us,” par says, a plea, a prayer._ “Adokaz-Aoi, _you never need to fear us.”_

_And Simon should be silent. He should not believe._

_But this demon’s touch does not burn._

_“Why?” His spine is cold granite, stiff and unmalleable. He cannot be unaware of the countless eyes on him but the Other in him is silent, quiescent. It is not demanding their deaths and he doesn’t know why, doesn’t know if he can trust it—if it really is a demon_ (it’s bonded to one, it calls their goddess its queen, it leads a legion of them, they call it **prince** ) _then shouldn’t he do the opposite of what it wants? And yet. But. “Tell me who you are,” he says. There is a fire in his throat: it makes his words into a command. “Tell me who you are to me.”_

 _The demon’s eyes open, black and white, ichor and milk. “We are yours,_ Adokaz,” _par says, and parz voice rings pure, rings true, strikes a song of certainty that echoes and echoes and_ echoes _. The pride in it is unmistakable. “Your_ Tabaord _, your governed-ones, the ones-you-rule. We are your_ Abavonin _, your dragons. We are the Dragons of the Sword.”_

Tabaord. Abavonin. _The words strike like flint, like cross-bolts through bone._

Tabaord _is what humans mean when they say ‘host’, as in ‘a host of angels’. It is the group, the pack, the legion, the choir. The voices that sing together and the warriors who fight together, limbs of the same body, notes in the same song. It is not a word for demons; that would be, that should be,_ tolhamach _, with all its animalistic connotations, its ragged-edged savagery. But these demons have taken an angel’s word for their own._

_Does that make them good? Does it make them trustworthy?_

_And_ Abavonin. _Dragons, in Enochian, with a lilt that makes it a nickname, a pet name, something fond and proud. The shape of it falls into Simon like a coin into a wishing well, shining, turning over and over._

_“And you are the Sword’s Shield,” Simon says slowly, putting it together. Piece by piece. He shapes the word with care, its import dawning like a sunrise behind his breastbone. “Kashtokaz.”_

_Not a title—not only a title—a name. He has it, now; it flows from his tongue like honey, slides from his lips like silk, and the one whose name it is makes a sound as if Simon has wounded parn. Parz razored pupils dilate, par looks hurt and hungry and disbelieving, ecstatic and heartbroken and heart-healed. All at once, all together._

_Par looks at him as if at a god, and Simon is dizzy with it._

_“What is the Sword?” he asks softly. He thinks he knows the answer._

_Kashtokaz does not disappoint him. “You,” par tells him, its voice gone raw and bruised. “You are the Sword,_ Adokaz-Aoi. _It has always been you.”_

***

_*If he dies if he dies—*_

_*He’s not going to die—*_

_*But if he does—*_

_*The healers won’t let him—*_

_*The_ angel _won’t let him—*_

 _*But the_ secretari _—*_

_*If they decide he’s a demon—*_

_*What do they know?*_

_*Which secrets are out?*_

_*He killed two people—*_

_*No—*_

_*That wasn’t Simon—*_

_*That was the angel—*_

_*Does that make it better?*_

_*Will the Clave care, will they make the distinction?*_

_*They must—*_

_*They have to—*_

_*He threw how many Shadowhunters around in the courtyard?*_

_*By their runes—*_

_*They might think it was only telekinesis.*_

_*But if the Secretseekers figure it out—*_

_*—the Clave will order him killed.*_

_*They can’t kill an angel’s vessel—*_

_*—the blasphemy—*_

_*But he’s_ not _a vessel—not really—*_

_*—Simon’s the one who’s ascendant—*_

_*—most of the time—*_

_*Memory: the shadows of a thousand wings against the walls of the Great Council Chamber, the Sword a streak of white fire in Simon’s hands, the voice that shook the world and shattered it,_ YOU WILL NOT TOUCH HIM _.*_

_*Why would an angel care about Jace—?*_

_*Maybe it cares about justice—*_

_*—fairness—*_

_*IT KILLED TWO PEOPLE.*_

_*But it knows Jace shouldn’t be punished—*_

_*Irrelevant, doesn’t matter, Simon Simon_ Simon _!*_

_*If they think he’s corrupted the angel—*_

_*—contaminated it with impure desires—*_

_*Is that even possible?*_

_*Who knows?*_

_*The_ secretari _would know.*_

_*They’ll kill him or they’ll lock him up—*_

_*—take him to the Hermetic Ziggurat—*_

_*—for study and experiment—*_

_*—cut him open and release the angel—*_

_*If he goes into the Ziggurat he’ll never come out—*_

_*If they take him to_ Idris _he’ll never get out—*_

_*They won’t let him go—*_

_*—too precious—*_

_*—too powerful—*_

They had chosen to be imprisoned—‘confined’—in Alec’s old room, not for any particular reason but because it was the first place that had occurred to them, because it didn’t _matter_ , because Simon was out of their reach and protection and even now the Secretseekers could be discovering something too terrible to save him from—

_*At best they’ll force him to fight—*_

_*Would that be so bad?*_

_*Would that be so wrong?*_

_*Doesn’t he have a responsibility to use his powers for good?*_

_*It would kill him—*_

_*—if he starts hunting them every demon in the world will be out for his blood—*_

_*They’ve left him alone so far—*_

_*Because he hasn’t gone after them—*_

_*If he did—*_

_*If he does—*_

_*—they’ll have to destroy him or be destroyed by heavenly fire.*_

_*Memory: a whirlwind of white flames and light, Simiel a beacon in Simon’s hand in the eye of the storm and the hellfire outside it breaking like waves against a white wall—Abigor kneeling—*_

_*It knelt to him—*_

_*To the angel inside him—*_

_*What if it_ isn’t _an angel?*_

_*If it isn’t—*_

_*—and the_ secretari _find out—*_

_*It looked like an angel.*_

_*What does an angel look like?*_

_*It left an angel mark on Alec’s hand—*_

_*But the Greater Demons used to be angels too—*_

_*—maybe a Fallen angel would still leave a mark—*_

_*Would one of the Fallen burn gold?*_

_*Abbadon was hideous—*_

_*—but Abigor wasn’t.*_

_*It attacked the demon in the Silent City—*_

_*Would a Greater Demon do that?*_

_*Maybe—*_

_*Maybe not—*_

Round and round, a useless sieving of the evidence that bore no fruit they could recognise but that they couldn’t stop, desperate for some solution that didn’t end with Simon in the Clave’s gilded cage or the _secretari_ ’s inescapable laboratories—

_*Or with his neck on the guillotine on Gard Hill—*_

_*The angel would never allow it—*_

_*So it would kill more people! Great!*_

_*There are ways to bind an angel—*_

_*—or a demon—*_

_*—aren’t there?*_

_*It might not be able to save itself—*_

_*—or Simon—*_

_*Not if the Clave was prepared—*_

_*Like the binding circle Arika found—*_

And woven in and under and around Simon’s see-sawing fate like currents in dark water were a host of other questions, terrors, mysteries sprouting thorns and opalescent teeth; the starlight blazing from Izzy’s hands, Magnus’ illness, the slaughtered Silent Brothers, Jace’s vision, the meaning of a pure death like a noose of lead, the murdered children—and the binding circle.

_*Who drew it—*_

_*Who_ knows _—*_

_*No Nephilim could have—*_

_*—no one but us knew—*_

_*But if the werewolves talked—*_

_*Who could they have talked to?*_

_*Anyone—*_

_*Everyone—*_

_*Arika wouldn’t have told us if it had been a warlock—*_

_*The fae would only be too happy to let him wreak chaos—*_

_*Vampires and werewolves don’t work magic—*_

_*So who—?*_

_*WHO—*_

_*Maybe the Spiral Court has factions. Maybe Arika is part of one—*_

_*—and whoever drew the circle part of another?*_

_*But still—*_

_*—how did they know about Simon?*_

_*We could ask Magnus—*_

_*—if he wasn’t ill.*_

It hit them all in the same moment, an open door where before there had been only adamant bars.

_*Ill—*_

_*Sick—*_

_* **Catarina** —*_

Alec had his phone out before the next thought.

“Catarina _ashipu_ , it’s Alec. Alec Sariel,” he added belatedly. Did she know? Had anybody told her? Did it matter in the slightest, with the pressure of Simon in the hands of the _secretari_ threatening to crush the air from his lungs? “I’m sorry, I know you must be busy, but—but could you please come to the Institute?” He could hear the splintered edge of his own voice through Izzy’s ears, through Jace’s, a horrible kind of echo more honest than he heard himself. “Simon was—he fell unconscious, and now he’s with the _secretari_ and I’m—we’re afraid of what they might find—what they might do to him—”

 _“And what do you think I can do?”_ Simple, clear, direct. It was like a brace of cool water.

“You’re a magical healer. If you could examine him instead…”

This time, Alec’s words were met with silence.

“Catarina _ashipu?”_ The pause was strangling, choking. Every second might be one too many, might be the moment the Secretseekers discovered a secret they would never let go.

 _“You want me to lie to the Clave,”_ Catarina said finally. _“Heal whatever’s wrong with your friend—presupposing he needs healing—and cover up any…unusual findings. Have I got that right?”_

“I know it’s a lot to ask—”

 _“No,”_ she snapped, _“you don’t. You have no idea what you’re asking, Shadowhunter.”_

His caste was almost a curse in her mouth.

Alec closed his eyes. “Please,” he said. “I will—anything I have to give is yours. Please.”

Her silence was a rope around his neck. A vise squeezing Jace’s heart. Liquid fire in Izzy’s gut.

 _“They probably won’t let me anywhere near him,”_ Catarina said. She sounded tired; so tired, and resigned. _“But I’ll try, Alec Sariel.”_

The relief took his legs from under him; the backs of Alec’s knees hit the bed, and he sat down heavily. “Thank you,” he whispered.

 _“Don’t thank me yet.”_ And she hung up before he could say another word.

Jace put his face in his hands. _*If he dies—*_

Alec and Izzy embraced him soul to soul, twining the three of them together as tightly as ribbons in a braid. His pain was theirs; their terror his own, coloured cordials pouring and splashing from glass to glass, into a single bowl that contained them all. Everything was coming apart so quickly, an avalanche of disaster, the halcyon dream they’d shared with Simon and Clary these last weeks turning to blood and ashes faster than they could draw the _iratzes_ , faster than they could staunch the wounds. Magnus’ son, his illness, Bellesword and Park swallowed into the maw of something unknowable, the light from Izzy’s hands, Simon—Simon displaying his powers in front of the High Inquisitor herself; they saw, they all saw him tossing Shadowhunters around like I Ching sticks and the hexagram they spelled might well be Simon’s execution—

The trill of Isabelle’s phone cut the silence like paper just as someone knocked.

 _“Agela_ Sariel?” one of their guards said through the door.

Izzy snatched up her phone. “It’s _Clary.”_

“Visitor for you.”

And the door opened.

***

The Sword.

You.

Always.

The Sword.

You.

Always.

The Sword.

You.

Always—

_It almost makes sense. He almost understands._

The Sword, the Sword, the Sword—

 _Kashtokaz doesn’t mean Simon. Wasn’t talking about Simon, wasn’t even talking_ to _Simon._

(The demon’s words are a blade forged of memory and it is plunging down through the dark pit-trench-chasm in Simon’s soul like a streaking comet and he can feel it falling, feel it coming, enlightenment like a lightning bolt streaking through the sky for his tiny human heart and oh it burns and oh it blazes, so bright, so white, a sweetness to shatter stars and a terror-pain to sear the soul, to break it open like glass exploding in the heat—)

_But something in him hears._

(There is a crystal coffin buried in the deepest depths of him and—)

_Something in him **answers**._

(—the sword shatters it into sidereal shards.)

 _It uncoils from the depths and rises, a leviathan, a titan, impossibly huge and impossibly terrible and impossibly_ other _, great and ancient and the shadow of its ascent is enough to eclipse a sun and it is coming, it is here, not leviathan but Leviathan and as it breaches the surface of the waves that are his conscious mind Simon **screams** —_

_Screams and screams and screams—_

(A thousand faces in a thousand mirrors roaring **REMEMBER** —)

_Alarm races through the gathered demons like the beacons of Gondor coming alight in a chain of flame but Simon doesn’t see it, can’t see it, stumbling away from Kashtokaz’s claw-gemmed hand and there is an asteroid shower tearing flares of fire through his head his heart his soul, hammering crashing burning and the agony is beyond words beyond thought he is screaming xe is screaming the storm of stars is—_

_Is—_

( **Remember** )

)Beings like living suns singing Singing changing shapes like water but always shapeless, beyond-shape beyond-form there is only the music the Music the Song, sound whose vibrations spin into matter and anti-matter and everything in-between, a thousand thousand worlds coalescing out of the chorale—(

)Constellation-convocation, a gathering of Singers and xe hurls xyr desperation and star-shattering rage at them, pleading-demanding for understanding and agreement. _*They are kin, born of us!*_ Conversing as no human can, in a way no mortal could understand, not with words or signs but pure thought and concept exchanged between minds faster than neurons can spark, faster by far than mere light _. *Annihilation cannot be the only answer. We Oecrimi/Sing, we do not Narmaz/Silence!*_

 _*The Mal-Teloch are not part of the Lviahe/Song,*_ another speaker parries, Arctic ice and unyielding gravity. _*They are already Silent, and their Silence spreads. They will destroy the Song if they are not first destroyed.*_

 _*A song is not only sound,*_ xe argues, _*it contains pause and rest. It holds silence within it. So can the Song find a place for the Mal-Teloch.*_

 _*The Firstborn’s_ anglard _rings true,*_ many Singers hum, but others remain unconvinced, stone and glass turning aside xyr arguments.

*The Firstborn is biased,* _they resonate, accusations like solar winds shrieking._ *Xe is not impartial on this matter—*(

)They tear xem from the in-between into the physical world and matter closes around xem, spinning into a body xyr captors do their best to bind. The chains might as well be sugar-spun for all they can hold xem, but xe is so tired, too tired to fight any longer, to Silence any more lives. Not even for xyr freedom can xe do it, and as they drag xyr temporal form forward and throw xem to this body’s knees on the ichor-stained ground, xe fully expects to die.

Xe looks up into the eyes of a Mal-Teloch warlord, eyes with white irises and black whites—(

)Sirath delicately bites the back of xyr neck, and xe shudders, stunned by the sensitivity of a nervous system, the sensations lighting up this body. Nurma’s tail is lashing, electric. “Flesh isn’t so bad, Toltorg,” ae purrs. “Let us show you—”

They fall together onto the nest-bed, a tangle of tails and wings and other limbs, and xe does not know this, does not know how bodies can join and become one for a time. But they show xem, and xe shifts, spins xyr form into something that can accommodate them both, and cries aloud against their skin as together they turn into stars—(

 _It is scales falling from his eyes and the earth dropping away, it is the graze of a sea-serpent’s fangs against his ankles as the waves pull him under, it is a beach of red sand and an ocean that only_ looks _black, it is his skull unfolding like a puzzle-box to let the light out_ (in) _and a cyanide straitjacket falling away in shreds of ash and Simon is screaming, cannot stop screaming. His skin is dissolving into fire and flame, the edges of his Self shredding tearing expanding outwards like a nuclear blast and it is chrysopoeia, he is become gold, he is become light, gilding-combusting-detonating apart into a thousand wing-limbs like the rays of a sun—_

Firstborn, Only-born, child of Night and Poison, do you remember, **do you remember who you are** —

**Do you remember what you’ve _done_ —**

)The killing/the slaughter/the _genocide_ , whole worlds tithed to the Silence/entire planets crushed like pearls underfoot, oceans of blood and choirs of screams and over it all the laughter, xe is laughing, the world-wards shreds of tattered silk in xyr hands as the darkness comes rushing in to feast and oh, the marrow-mana of broken bones/broken souls is so, so sweet—(

**NO!**

_Xe screams, and burns at the pyre of xyr remembering, and in the light of the bonfire-bonefire flames every demon gleams moon-forged silver._

***

Izzy hit the _reject call_ button and shoved the phone under the pillow with Shadowhunter speed, but one glance at the man who opened the door and they all knew he had heard it ringing. He couldn’t possibly have _not_ heard it, with a Shadowhunter’s hearing, and sure enough his gaze darted at once to the bed, where the sound had originated, and then to the guilty pillow when he saw that Izzy’s hands were empty.

But instead of demanding that she hand it over, he only dipped his head slightly and stepped aside to let their visitor through.

It was Max, carrying a bundle of papers and books and somehow managing to look both blithely unconcerned and supremely annoyed as he strode into the room. “Thank you, that will be all,” he said, cool and sharp as an _adamas_ blade. Like most _jääydinae_ , he wasn’t fond of strangers—he must hate, Izzy realised, having the Institute packed full of them without warning—and  with a slightly wry expression the guard took the hint and retreated, with only a murmured _“Agela_ Sariel, _Jääydin_ Lightwood,” as he saw himself out and closed the door behind him.

The _agelai_ exchanged a mental look, a kind of shared flash of sharp-edged question marks as Max set his burdens on the desk.

“I have decided there’s no use being annoyed with you,” Max announced, his voice only slightly warmer now that he was addressing his siblings. “Clearly this is my own fault for not having my _lämieli_ properly trained…”

 _*He didn’t take the phone. Why didn’t he take the phone?*_ Izzy asked, turning the device in question to silent. She felt guilty for it, but there was no way she could take the time to call Clary back now.

_*He wasn’t ordered to.*_

_*It’s Light Worlder tech, the older generations don’t use them much—*_

_*—maybe he didn’t think it was important—*_

_*—maybe he’s Ascended, and his ears weren’t sharp enough to hear it—*_

_*Or maybe he disapproves of what the Inquisitor is doing,*_ Izzy thought, and felt the supposition rock Alec back a mental pace.

“…but I want you to know I strongly resent the three of you causing this much chaos in a _single day.”_ Max glanced between them. “Are you even listening?”

“No,” Izzy said flatly, because you weren’t supposed to give a _jääydin_ excuses or explanations when they asked a closed question. “Was it important?”

Max pinched the bridge of his nose, the gesture made surreal by his youth. “Not as important as the question of how many people saw you looking like _that?”_

He waved a pained hand in the direction of Izzy and Jace. Blinking, Izzy looked down at herself, and suppressed a wince: her beautiful _cóada_ was absolutely filthy with blood and muck, the flame-coloured silk marred with countless stains. And no wonder, after the day the poor thing had been through…but still, she had to swallow a pang of regret, rubbing the cuff of her sleeve between her fingers. It had been one of the most glorious things she’d ever owned, and she had been so proud to be fitted for it, to stride into the Institute this morning with it blazing like a banner around her... But she seriously doubted whether even the brownies who took care of her family’s dry-cleaning could possibly salvage it.

Jace, not having fainted amidst the corpses of the Silent Brothers, was a little better off. But not by much.

“By the _Angel,_ am I the only one who gives a damn about this family’s reputation?” Max bit out. He set his papers down on Alec’s desk and stormed back to the door, which he opened smartly. “You! Whatever-your-name-is! Have someone bring my brother and sister clean clothes, _please.”_

“Of course, _Jääydin_ Lightwood,” the guard said respectfully.

“Thank you.” Somewhat mollified, Max shut the door and turned back to his siblings. “If you allow them to treat you like nothing, they will believe you are nothing,” he said, sternly. “You have to insist on the treatment you deserve. Demand it, if you have to. For our House’s reputation, if nothing else.”

“Yes, Max,” Alec said patiently. They had all heard this kind of thing before. “Did you have a chance to study the circle?”

“I did.” Returning to the desk, Max spread out his papers: the sketch Izzy had made of the binding circle was now covered in Max’s own annotations. “And—”

“How’s Simon?” Jace interrupted. “Have you heard anything? Is he awake yet, is he—”

He stopped, because even now that they were three-as-one none of them could find the words to finish that question.

“I have not been told anything about Simon,” Max said. “I know he is in the Infirmary, because I overheard some people talking about it, but that is all. What happened to him?”

“We don’t know,” Izzy admitted. “He used his powers, and…and he collapsed.”

They gave him the full story, telling it as quickly as they could: Izzy describing how the angel had scooped her up from the Institute and taken her to the Bone City, and what they’d found there; all three of them relating the events in Raziel’s Courtyard—Simon’s attack, his collapse, the deaths of Syrs Bellesword and Park. Max listened to it all without commentary, his expression indifferent but his eyes intensely thoughtful.

“This might be even more relevant than I thought,” Max said finally when they were done, gesturing again to the drawing. “It might explain…something.”

It was so unusual for Max to hesitate about anything that all three of the older Lightwoods pricked up their metaphorical ears, and came closer to examine the papers for themselves.

“Arika called it a binding circle,” Alec said.

“If it is, it is a strange one,” Max said. He pointed at one of the dozens of equal-armed crosses incorporated in the design. “This symbol is supposed to represent the unification of the ethereal and the material.” He frowned. “Isabelle, what is that on your arm?”

Taken aback by the non-sequitur, Izzy followed his glance. “I think it’s ink.” It was a dark blue blur, as if someone had drawn on her with a pen and the doodle had smeared. She couldn’t imagine how it had gotten there, among all the other stains. “Sorry.” She licked her fingers and rubbed at it; now it had caught Max’ attention, he was unlikely to go on until she dealt with it.

Jace looked drawn and tired—and no wonder—but he managed to keep his temper. “So?”

Max gave him a faintly contemptuous look, which under the circumstances Izzy thought was more than a little unfair. She shifted to wrap her arm around Jace’s shoulders, and took his weight when he leaned into her. _“So_ ,” Max said, “this circle is designed to bind something that is both temporal _and_ incorporeal at once. Which makes no sense; everything alive is either one or the other. Demons take on physical form when they enter our world, but it is only a seeming; they are not creatures of matter. But this circle couldn’t hold something like a vampire or werewolf either, because werewolves _are_ creatures of matter.”

The answer seemed obvious to Izzy. “What about a possessed person?” Who else would anyone want to bind but Simon, and the angel in him? What else could possibly fit the strange requirements of the circle?

But, “No,” Max said, and the word was a stone dropping into dark water, the shriek of winter wind through mountain peaks and a sudden drop when you thought the ground was solid beneath you. The focus of all three _agelai_ snapped to their younger brother like seraph swords unsheathing, icy shock sweeping through the bond. “To hold a possessed creature, you use the symbols for the ethereal _and_ for the material—to bind both the possessor and the possessed. This is something else, meant _for_ something else.”

They were a tri-faceted soul in three bodies; the processing power of three minds parsed the revelation in a sliver of a second and the conclusion raked through them like Abbadon’s claws, pierced them through as the Greater Demon’s talons had driven into Alec. And with it—with it the sensation all Shadowhunters knew from their nightmares: the moment of reaching for a blade or an arrow and finding nothing but empty air, the monster coming for you and your weapons spent—and it was only a nightmare, only ever a nightmare, because no Shadowhunter would or could lose track of how many arrows they had in their quiver, how many knives at their belt… But now they were awake, and it was that same feeling, the reaching for something depended upon—and the lurch to find it missing.

“Are you saying Simon’s not possessed?” Alec asked quietly. So quietly.

“At the very least, whoever drew this did not think so,” Max said. “Presuming that they meant to bind Simon with it, and not someone or something else.”

“Who else could they have wanted bound?” Jace asked harshly. “Who else, _what_ else, was there to bind?”

“Assuming Simon was the intended target is just that—an assumption,” Max insisted. “The reference to something simultaneously corporeal and incorporeal could even refer to _us_ , to Nephilim—as the descendants of humans and angels, material and immaterial respectively, we might even fulfil the requirements ourselves.”

“But no one else fainted,” Izzy said. “Simon was the only one the circle affected.”

“He fainted in Raziel’s Courtyard, too, and there was no circle then,” Max pointed out. “Maybe his body shut down because it could only channel so much power without being permanently damaged. You said he bled both times, and no one could wake him—if we accept the premise that it harms him in some way to use or conduct the powers he has so far displayed, then it is possible the appearance of the circle and his first collapse are unconnected, only coincidentally timed.” He shrugged. “Personally I think it is too much for coincidence, but it is _possible_ that the circle was not responsible—just as it is possible that it was in fact intended for any Nephilim within its bounds rather than Simon in particular, and had no effect because it was incorrectly drawn, or was not a working spell-circle at all. Or it did something none of us have detected yet.”

“But you don’t think it’s likely.” Alec.

Max glanced at him. “No,” he admitted. “I think it was meant for Simon, and I think it accomplished the task it was meant to. I think someone who knows exactly what he is has been watching him, and was watching then, and drew that circle to bind and contain him. And I think they did that because they were afraid of what he might do if he was free.”

The shockwave that tore through the Institute at just that moment rather proved the point.

* * *

 

NOTES

 _Fumana_ —a Runed!rune, i.e., one of my own inventions. It diagnoses any physical health issues (including things like energy levels and the strength of someone’s mana), transferring that information from the body of the one Marked to the mind/knowledge of the person who drew it. This can be the same person.

 _Sila_ —a Runed!rune. A rune for a temporary energy boost. Too many used within too short a time can lead to a comatose state.

 _Vas_ —as already mentioned in an earlier chapter, vas is a Runed!rune, which lets the stele or seraph blade become a vessel for a greater power (for seraph blades, this is the angel they’re named for; for a stele, it’s the mana of the wielder).

 _Cesuine_ —Runed!rune, allows the stele to channel the mana of its wielder into drawing Marks (the reason you can’t just draw a rune with a pencil and have it work). 

 _Navitas_ —Runed’s name for the canon power rune.

Gamaliel—an/the angel who takes the elect into Heaven.

Af—an angel of light.

Lahabiel—an angel who protects against evil spirits.

Barrattiel—an angel ‘of support’, however you want to interpret that.

Karael—an angel who has the power to thwart demons (although one assumes that they all do?)

Sator is Latin for Creator/begetter/founder, and is a title/name Nephilim sometimes give to Raziel in their prayers. Prayers to Jonathan Shadowhunter address him as Genitor, for those who are interested; its meaning is creator/father/ancestor. (This was explained in the notes for the last chapter, but since it’s been over HALF A YEAR since the last chapter, you can have a reminder.)

Californium—specifically californium 252—is the most expensive substance in the world after anti-matter (which, how on Earth do you _buy_ that?) A gram of californium 252 costs _$27 million_. It’s also the densest/heaviest naturally-occurring substance on Earth.

Chamuel—an archangel whose name means ‘he who seeks God’.

 _Lilnilipah_ —the bond of light between Simon and the demon. From the Enochian words for ‘living breath’ ‘blood’ and ‘branch’.

On the werewolf symbol: I chose to use a crescent moon instead of a full moon as the symbol of the werewolves because traditionally, the full moon is when werewolves transform and, in most myths, become monstrous creatures with no self-control who are very likely to rend and kill whomever they come into contact with. The crescent moon, then, is the symbol of self-control, representing werewolves as creatures of mindful strength and not as monsters.

On the _secretari_ ; in the 14th century ‘secretary’ meant ‘someone entrusted with secrets’, which is the sense in which the _secretari_ get their name. They don’t take notes and organise day planners for important people; they _are_ the important people.

A ziggurat is a type of building from ancient Mesopotamia, and looked kind of like raised platforms crossed with step pyramids. There’s a wiki page on them with pictures if you want a look!

Miracle is a real, albeit dying, Welsh surname.

 _Mal-Teloch_ —Enochian, literally ‘those of death who live’.

 _Anglard_ is Enochian for ‘thought’; here it means a combination of ‘thought’, ‘concept’ and ‘words’, given the strange way in which the Singers communicate.

Hermetic Ziggurat—the home/base of the Secretseekers/ _secretari_. Hermetic means ‘sealed/air-tight’ as well as ‘of or relating to an ancient occult tradition encompassing alchemy, astrology, and theosophy’, so it seemed very appropriate for these mysterious scholars.

The I Ching is a form of divination where one can use sticks, among other things, to gain insight into the universe. You toss the sticks or stalks and the patterns they make are ‘hexagrams’, which have different meanings. It’s really a lot more complicated than that, but that’s the very basics.


	12. Silver and Gold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **An Announcement and Acknowledgement:** I was going to mention this in the notes for the last chapter, but I didn’t want to spoil you guys before you’d even read it. So I shall say it here instead: **Kashtokaz is not my character.** He is an OC created by my darling internet wife Erin. You can check out her hilariously awesome blog at dracavy.tumblr.com, which also happens to contain concept art for Kash. All credit for him is therefore obviously hers and not mine!
> 
> Also, ALL CREDIT AND GRATITUDE TO Quidnuncian for fact-checking my Jewish info. Thank you so much again, lovely!
> 
> Now, some changes: chapter three ( _Angels and Agela_ ), chapter five ( _The Truths That Burn_ ) and chapter ten (previously _Dragons of the Sword,_ now _A Mother’s Word_ ) have all been edited to varying degrees. (This is what I’ve been doing over the last YEAR, omfg).
> 
> In _Angels and Agela_ and subsequent chapters, the pronouns for one of the aliens glimpsed in Simon’s visions, Nurma, has been changed from ze to ae; the full pronoun set is now ae/aer/aers/aerself. 
> 
> In _The Truths That Burn,_ Clary and Olianthe’s sex scene has been expanded as well as edited, and a new mini-scene has been appended to the end. Please read the updated author’s note for that chapter, as there is now a warning for non-human biology, which may squick or trigger some readers. All you really need to know is that Olianthe does not have the genitalia/biology of a human cis-woman, but identifies herself as a girl as humans understand it. 
> 
> The greatest changes have been done to the previous chapter, now titled _A Mother’s Word_ for reasons that will become obvious if you reread it. The scene/s of Simon in the ‘dark place’ with the demon/s have been heavily changed, and I urge everyone to reread them, since their continuation in this chapter won’t make sense otherwise. The scene that was originally going to be the beginning of this chapter has become the closing scene of the last chapter, too.
> 
> **I continue to love, adore, and be unspeakably grateful to everyone who reads and comments on this fic. Thank you all so much; you're all amazing. We wouldn't be here without you <3**
> 
> **LASTLY, THIS CHAPTER IS DEDICATED TO MY INTERNET WIFE KIBU. HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIBS <3**  
> 

Catarina held the phone tightly between her fingers for a long, long moment after hanging up.

Alec had no idea what he was asking for. But if he also had no idea of the debt she owed him, _she_ knew, and knew how deep was the account he had to draw on.

It was certainly enough to cover this.

She sighed, sent a text to ask Arika to come watch Magnus while she was gone, and gathered her things.

Magnus’ kitchen counters were almost hidden beneath an organised chaos of herb bundles and sachets, coloured vials of glass and crystal, jars of pickled mandrake or ground alicorn (certified found or gifted, never hunted for), an assortment of wand-like wooden spoons engraved or embossed with a variety of sigils, five separate mortar-and-pestle sets (three stone, one rowanwood, and one dragon-bone), a scattering of different gemstones, and small pots of live plants, few of which a mundane would have recognised. Neat cauldrons and kettles hovered about the room, most with well-behaved burning pocket-watches underneath: the red and white flames did no damage to the clocks, and would go out upon the correct conjunction of hour and minute hands. All of it was Catarina’s responsibility, and despite Alec’s pleas to hurry, and the debt she owed him, some things could not be rushed. It took nearly twenty minutes before she was satisfied that her potions and spellwork could be left unattended, and it took her another quarter-hour to deftly whip up a witch ball to tide Magnus over while she was gone. She had dozens of the hollow glass balls waiting, but the whorled sticks of cinnamon taken from a cinnamalogus’ nest had to be ground by hand, the lavender lightly seared in pine oil, the wormwood leaves chopped fine with a silver knife. She dropped nine rosehips into the glass with the rest, sprinkled a dusting of saffron on top, and sealed it with wax from the bees of a priestess of Austėja.

Slipping the witch ball onto a red ribbon, a gesture sending her bag to wait for her beside the door, she made her way to Magnus’ room. Lines of electrum wire had been set into his door, glowing like banked embers; they flared when she set her hand in the circle at chest-height. Fire tasted her, checked her against the list of those allowed to pass, and subsided; the door opened beneath her fingertips without a sound.

Trying to be quiet, she crept across the room to hang the witch ball at the window, where the sunlight would help spread its healing influence. But she must not have been quiet enough, because as she moved to leave, a groggy voice emerged from the mare’s nest of the bed.

“Cat?”

“Yes?” Centuries of experience at the bedsides of the ill kept her voice and mien calm as she turned to her oldest friend. “It’s all right, Magnus. I’m going out for a little while, but Arika will be here. Do you want something to help you sleep?” Despite the exhausting drain of his sickness, he had not been sleeping well.

“Please,” Magnus sighed.

Catarina fetched a sleeping draught, and sat on the edge of his bed to help him sit up to drink it, noting as she did that his skin was noticeably paler than it had been even a few hours ago. He was cool to her touch, and clammy, his eyes glazed and struggling to focus; his hands struggled to hold the cup. She had to guide him back against the pillows when he was done.

It horrified her to see him reduced to this. And enraged her. And terrified her.

“Where are you going?” he asked as she tucked the blankets in around his body.

“The Institute, if they’ll let me in,” Catarina said tartly. “Something’s happened with the Fairchild boy. Your Alexander wants me to look him over.”

His eyes had already closed: now they snapped open. “What?”

“Are you having trouble focussing?” That shouldn’t be happening yet. There had only been two deaths. They would know if there had been a third; _Magnus_ would know. “I said—”

“No, I’m sorry, it’s not that. I’m fine.” Not true, so far from true, but she knew what he meant. “You can’t.”

“I can’t—?”

“You can’t examine Simon.”

She looked at him. “You’re not talking about the vanishingly small chance the Nephilim will let me anywhere near him, are you,” she said slowly.

“No.” The potion had to be making his eyelids heavy by now, but when he met her gaze his eyes were clear and hard as citrines. “I’m telling you, as _En_ of this territory, that you _can’t.”_

He had the right. As _En_ —what the Nephilim, in their childish simplifications, called a High Warlock—he had the right to compel or forbid her, who lived in his _uru-zag_ , his territory. But there was something obscene about his using the power that was now killing him to command.

It honed her voice sharp. “For Ma’at’s sake, _why?”_

Magnus closed his eyes and turned his face away. “Because it would do more harm than help,” he said quietly. Tiredly. “I’ve never commanded you before, Cat. Trust that I wouldn’t do it now if it didn’t matter.”

She knew he wouldn’t. But it left her nothing to say as he drifted into much-needed sleep, confusion and fear hooked together in the pit of her stomach.

There were only so many reasons he would forbid her from examining Simon. And she didn’t like any of them.

***

When Izzy didn’t answer either, Clary called her girlfriend.

This did not involve a cell phone.

Buried in Clary’s backpack was a necklace she was always careful not to let Jace or the other Shadowhunters see, in case they recognised its unhuman origins; despite her friendship with Izzy, and Alec’s delicately growing relationship with Magnus, Olianthe was not a topic Clary wanted to discuss with the Downworlder-prejudiced Nephilim. The faerie-forged pendant was an acorn of gold and bronze, with a little cap of green enamel whose stem formed the loop for the chain, and Clary had taken it off for training but now that it was clear Izzy wasn’t going to pick up, she sat down at a bus stop and rummaged through her work-out clothes until her fingers closed around its familiar coolness.

She wasn’t alone at the bus stop, but right now she simply could not care less if it earned her weird looks when she unscrewed the acorn’s cap, tipped the firefly inside onto her palm, and whispered the charm Olianthe had taught her just for moments like this one:

 

_“As acorns grow and stars align,_

_By glass and bone and dragon’s fire,_

_I call the heart that calls to mine,_

_And swear to her my need is dire.”_

 

The firefly—glowing like an enchanted jewel, even though she’d checked online and they weren’t supposed to do that during the day—blinked its light at her as if in acknowledgement, then rose smoothly from her palm and flew up into the sky.

“The fuck?” someone said. Clary ignored them. Probably the exclamation wasn’t even intended for her magic bug anyway.

Carefully, her fingers gone shaky and clumsy, she screwed the acorn shut again and fastened the chain around her neck, let it drop down under her shirt, between her breasts.

 _‘Do all your spells rhyme?’_ Clary had asked, when Olianthe had given her the quatrain.

 _‘Most of our magics require no words at all,’_ the princess-knight had answered. _‘But I was told that mortals find rhymes easier to remember, and I would not have you forget how to call me if ever you need me.’_

She had placed the firefly in Clary’s hair the very first night they’d met, at Magnus’ apartment. _‘Tell that one when you wish to see me, and I will come,’_ she’d promised—but it was difficult to carry a glowbug around unobtrusively, and the acorn had appeared beneath Clary’s pillow not long after the magnifying glass had.

Clary rubbed the chain between her fingers restlessly, her stomach a sick knot of nerves. She didn’t really need the necklace, just like she didn’t really need the firefly—any insect would carry a message to Olianthe if Clary just told it the faerie girl’s name; it even worked with the pigeons that came when Clary stuck her head out the window and yelled _‘I would like to call my girlfriend now, please,’_ —which she got away with because her mother wasn’t home and the neighbours had long since stopped raising their eyebrows at the Jewish woman’s neopagan daughter. But a note slipped to a sparrow or a non-rhyming memo dictated to a housefly could take hours or even days to reach the Seelie princess, and Clary couldn’t wait that long.

 _Simon_ might not be able to wait that long.

The thought she’d been trying not to think since she saw the bloodied Shadowhunters outside the Institute rose up her throat like poison: what if the thing they’d been fighting was Simon? The monster that could come out in the middle of the day, the creature it would take a dozen Shadowhunters to bring down; _what if it was Simon?_

She remembered the other afternoon, when he and Jace had kissed in front of her, forgetting that it was a secret. The snarl on Simon’s lips when for the briefest instant he’d thought she was a threat to Jace; the way he’d thrown Jace behind him as if he had forgotten who Clary was, forgotten that she would _never_. The alien rage that had twisted the face she knew and loved into something utterly _wrong_.

She’d told him it was fine. She’d told him that he wasn’t any kind of monster. And she believed that. But if someone had triggered his PTSD, he might have looked enough like one for the Nephilim to cut him down.

What if that red, definitely-not-ichor-blood had been _his?_

Clary had never used the emergency-rhyme before, and she had assumed that if she ever did Olianthe would come quickly, instantly, teleporting to her side in a gleam of peacock-colours, the way Clary knew she could. But buses came and went from the stop, swallowing new passengers and disgorging old ones, and no beautiful princess-knight appeared with her hair like a river of Celtic gold, and the toxin of fear and dread worked closer to Clary’s heart with every beat. She had one hand on her necklace, and the other on her phone, and the fingers of both hands ached with how tightly she held them.

It seemed like a long time before the acorn-pendant flared warm against her skin, but when it did she reacted instantly, without pausing for surprise; she had it open again in a breath, and there inside was a tiny letter, the same as the ones Clary had found in her cereal and behind her toothbrush in the weeks after she and Olianthe had first met. It was rolled up tight to fit in the small space, and Clary had to peel it open with her fingernails and squint to read it, unwilling to wait the seconds it would take to get out her faerie-made magnifying glass—

 

_Find a green place._

 

There was nothing else but the impossible intricacy of Olianthe’s signature, which was not her name or even a decorated _O_ but an elegant knot of curlicues and dots and calligraphic sweeps, evoking leaping unicorns and flowers and swords without being directly like any of those things. On another day Clary would happily scrutinise it with her magnifying glass to study how the effect was managed, in the same way she spent hours poring over the paintings of Julie Dillon and Stephanie Pui-Mun Law—but this _wasn’t_ another day, it was _today_ , and today Clary’s friends weren’t answering their phones and New York had been flooded with Shadowhunters and ‘find a green place’ _wasn’t a straight answer damn it_ —

Clary forced herself to take a deep breath. Let it out again. Curled up the message and pushed it into her pocket; fixed her necklace; swung her bag up, and ran back to the subway.

A green place only meant one thing when one of Olianthe’s people said it: not green but _greenery_ , grass and trees and a fragment of wildness, a place where the earth could breathe instead of being suffocated by tarmac and concrete. Properly it meant something like a forest, something far less tamed than even the untidiest corners of Central Park, some place where humans did not go—but of course there was nowhere like that in New York city, not this side of a knowe. So a garden would do, if Clary could break into somebody’s garden, if anyone in New York actually _had_ the kind of gardens that would qualify, which they didn’t. The Kew Gardens in Queens were too far away, and so was the Brooklyn Botanical Garden—and the Bronx had a surprising number of parks tucked away, but few of them were what Clary could honestly call _green_ : plastic-smooth rolls of grass and bruise-proof playgrounds, baseball courts and basketball courts and even an outdoor pool, in the Crotona Park. The only trees pruned within an inch of their lives. Clary could have gone to any one of them, but what if they weren’t green _enough?_ What if she wasted precious time going to a park that wasn’t any good for whatever Olianthe wanted?

Which only left one choice.

At the very end of the 5 train was Seton Falls, 30 acres of lush semi-wildness held cupped in the borough’s palms like an unexpected emerald. There were open spaces for picnics and games, and a children’s playground, but huge stretches of it were what the city called ‘preserved natural land’—a sanctuary for the thirty species of birds that lived in it. Clary doubted the authenticity of the park’s classification, given that the beautiful waterfalls were manmade and how likely was it, really, that _anywhere_ on the island counted as ‘natural land’ anymore? But it was the wildest green place Clary knew, without question, and she told herself that over and over as she watched the subway stations flick by, her gut twisting with anxiety and impatience.

What the hell was Olianthe playing at, anyway? Why couldn’t she just come to Clary directly, the way she always had before? All right, maybe appearing in a flash of peacock-shimmering light on a busy street in the middle of the day wasn’t the best way to keep the Shadow World hidden… But she could have teleported behind a dumpster, or in an alleyway, or _something_. Not sent Clary running across the borough after she hit the figurative panic button!

 _She must have a reason,_ Clary told herself as she left the subway and entered the park. _A **good** reason. You **know** she must. She’s so protective, she would never leave you hanging without a good reason…_

But even if it was the very best of reasons, time was running through Clary’s fingers like water, and Simon still wasn’t picking up, and she was afraid.

A different kind of pang cut through her as she stepped away from the manicured areas of the park and into the trees, off the path. She hadn’t come here for three years, before today. Not since her dad grew too ill for their Sunday morning bird-watching sessions; not since he died. Once upon a time every Sunday’s dawn found them here, her dad with his binoculars, Clary with the book to mark down the birds they spotted. When she was thirteen she’d started bringing a small sketchpad with her, packing it in the bag with the thermos and sandwiches, to draw the sunlight filtered green by the canopy as if spilling through a stained-glass window. She’d drawn the birds too, of course, but they were harder to see, harder to get a good look at. Sketching birds had taught her how to get an image down quickly, before her model flit away…

Saturday for the Shabbat, for _zakhor_ and _shamor_ —remembering and observing, the Jewish day of rest that was like a little festival every week. Clary had always thought of it as her mother’s day, with the forbidding of _melach_ making everything into a kind of elaborate game, the comfortable warmth of the morning service at the synagogue, and the Havdalah ritual to perform when the stars signalled the proper time... All bound up with the taste of challah bread and cholent. And then Sunday for the park and the birds and her dad’s quiet smile; the city streets as empty as they ever got in the city, and the sunlight spreading slow as honey across the sky, dripping through the trees, a golden conductor bidding her choir of birds to sing… Sunday had been her father’s day. Her day to _be_ with her father, quietly, as sweet and necessary a staple of her life as a challah braid.

But then it was gone, and with it her taste for challah. For Yahweh. She hadn’t been to the synagogue since her dad died, hadn’t been able to extricate the two halves of her life from each other, and so in losing one had lost both. Now she called on Kore in her prayers, and Hecate, and Aradia, as facet-avatars of a truth her mother’s religion no longer felt big enough to hold.

And she came to this bastion of memory for a faerie girl, not her father.

Clary’s fingers were tight on the strap of her bag as she dug into the undergrowth. “I’m here,” she announced to the air, and if her voice was a little thick, it could have been for a hundred reasons. “Olianthe? Is this green enough? Can anyone hear me? ’Lianthe?”

“Clary!”

And there she was, as if she had been there all along and Clary had only, somehow, not noticed her before; Olianthe, with her hair like the tail of a comet and her face a star, beautiful and alien as a diamond. She wore a dress that might have been cut from the fabric of a tropical ocean, the green-blue of warm waves fitted to her upper body and dissolving into a fall of velvet below her waist: a dress for running through the woods in like the elven creature she was, a fey thing, bare feet as fleet as a deer or a unicorn as she ran—Clary could see the image so clearly she could have painted it.

She looked like a painted thing, Olianthe, so perfect that it hurt a little. Except that no human artist could ever have captured her in canvas, ever have hemmed in her unearthly beauty inside a picture-frame.

Looking at her was like looking at a dawn.

 “What has happened?” dawn asked, and she was not human but not so inhuman that Clary couldn’t recognise the worry in her voice, her face. At least in this moment, with her peacock-coloured eyes filled with dread like dark wine. “Are you hurt?” She held out her arms, imploring, afraid; they were bare, but for vambraces the same colour as her dress. “Come to me, I will take you to the knowe, my mother’s healers will—”

“I’m not hurt.” But something bothered her about this tableau, and it only took her a moment to realise what.

’Lianthe said, _come to me,_ but she hadn’t move towards Clary, not one single step. The realisation struck cold and chiming in Clary’s chest, a bell of ice with a silver clapper. She had fully expected her girlfriend to sweep her up like a tigress with her cub, and if Olianthe had thought Clary might be hurt—

“Why didn’t you come?” The words were out of her mouth before she realised she had to ask, before she could suppress the bolt of selfish hurt and focus on what actually mattered, which was _were Simon and the others all right_ —

But Olianthe, who did not know that, answered. “When we must reach a far-off place in an instant, my kind travels through the memory of the earth,” she said. “You have experienced this.”

Clary blinked. “That’s what that is?” She had passed through what Olianthe called the in-between while sheltered in the princess’ arms, on their way from one side of the city to the other in less time than it took to take a breath; a place of ancient trees and laughing shadows and a scent even city-girl Clary recognised in her bones as _wildwood_. The first time had been the night of Jace’s Ascension party, but it had been far from the last. Every night when she went to train in the knowe, Olianthe brought her to the Seelie court through the ghosts of those trees.

 “Yes.” Olianthe lowered her arms to her sides. “At night, the world remembers more clearly what it used to be, and I can go almost anywhere. But it is not night, and in the day the memory of the true earth lingers only in places like this.” She gestured to the trees around them, illustratively.

But Clary had read too many faerie stories, and spent too long as a Seelie princess’ datemate, not to notice that that wasn’t actually an answer. It _sounded_ like one, but nothing Olianthe had said actually definitively tied itself to Clary’s question. She frowned, unhappy. “And is that why you didn’t come? You couldn’t reach me without a green place?”

Olianthe’s face became an exquisite waxwork.

“You promised not to hurt me,” Clary said. “Lying to me, even by omission, is hurting me.”

Olianthe curled her hand into a fist, then opened it. The gesture spoke of helplessness, a poignant pain. “Then I cannot lie to you,” she said, and Clary was reminded again that a faerie’s word was more than honour, was a compulsion stronger than chains;

_‘If you give your word, can you break it?’_

_‘No.’_

“Nor would I protect you from the truth, as if you were a child blind to the dangers of salt and steel,” Olianthe continued, watching Clary all the while with expressions that shifted like water over coral bones, wonderful but wild, containing riptides and sharp reefs: yearning and desperation, hunger and resignation, fear and fervour.  “I know you are no Bearnon Bride, to come apart at the first breath of wind. You do not need me to shelter you from the storm. So, then: yes, I could have come to you. It would have cost me dear, but I could have paid the price.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Clary asked sharply. She could feel her pulse in her wrists, beating hard and fast. “It was the emergency code. I could have been hurt. I could have been _dying_.”

“No,” Olianthe said swiftly, and her voice was a whip of frost, sharp and glittering. “The breath of your message bore no imprint of blood or pain. For that, I would have run barefoot over iron to come to you. I feared you hurt, but knew you were uninjured.”

Some sore, thorny hurt in Clary’s chest loosened to hear it. But still: she firmed her resolve, and insisted. “Tell me why you didn’t come.”

“Because I was afraid,” Olianthe said simply, unashamed to admit her fear as no human ever could be. “I knew you stood in sunlight. And I feared that if I came to you there, you would repudiate me.”

Clary stared at her. And realised, as Olianthe met her gaze without flinching, that she had never seen the faerie girl during the day before. And that even now, Olianthe stood in a patch of perfect shadow, untouched by the glints of sunlight falling through the branches.

This was why she had not run forward to Clary when she appeared: because the ground was littered with splashes of sunlight like autumn leaves, and to move forward was to step into one.

Months of Olianthe’s fierce tenderness were not enough to keep Clary from remembering, with a sick, sudden jolt, that demons could not bear sunlight.

But no— _no_ ; demons _died_ in sunlight, and Olianthe had said she could have come to Clary; she could not have, if it would have killed her. That was not what _could have_ meant. Clary took a deep breath, and refused to reach for the magnifying glass in her pocket.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I do not always look like this,” Olianthe whispered. “And I could not bear for you to fear me, _réalta croí.”_

She had called Clary that last night, in the pool. Clary still didn’t know what it meant—and yet did, if not the dictionary translation than the heart of it, the core of it, writ clear in the way it left Olianthe’s lips. _Dear one, precious one_.

_(Beloved one?)_

“I don’t think I could fear you,” Clary said carefully. “Not for looking different. I could be afraid of you if you _did_ something, if you hurt people. Do you hurt people? Like demons do,” she added quickly, remembering from before that ‘hurt’ had too many potential meanings to hold _any_ meaning with a faerie. Specificity was required, among a people that couldn’t lie.

“I do not consume the aetheric energy of any thing living or dead,” Olianthe said solemnly. “I do not hunt or torture mortal or immortal things, though I have done both in the past. I have killed, but only when no other course but death was open to me.”

“Just to be clear, I am not happy to hear that you used to torture people,” Clary said. “But I did kind of take it as read, considering all the stories about your people.” She sighed. “Like I said, ’Lianthe, I won’t fear you because of how you look. I can’t promise I won’t think your other form isn’t ugly—” She thought of Abbadon, twisting poor Dorothea’s body into a nauseating monstrosity. “—but it won’t make me _fear_ you. Only what you _do_ can do that, not how you look.”

Olianthe said nothing, only stared at her. Though her face was entirely expressionless, her whole body sang a chorale of emotion, confusion and near-disbelief and uncertain joy.

Clary sighed again, this time with a little more frustration. “I’m not—you don’t have to show me, okay? I get that it’s—private, and scary to share. But next time, if it’s an emergency— _please_ come. I promise I won’t call if it’s not important. If it doesn’t really, _really_ matter that you come.”

“If there is a next time, I will come,” Olianthe promised huskily.

“I appreciate that.” She made a note—not for the first time—to find a less awkwardly formal way to say ‘thank you’ to someone who under no circumstances could be thanked with those words. And, more than a little ashamed to have let herself get so selfishly side-tracked, brought them back to something that mattered more than a little relationship drama. “But, you know, this time—I called because…”

She described what she’d seen outside the Institute, told Olianthe about the unanswered calls. “Do you know what’s going on?” she asked, trying and failing to keep her renewed anxiety out of her voice. “What were they hunting? Why are they _here?”_

“I do not know.” Olianthe’s smooth mask of impassivity broke apart into a frown. “But the Queen-my-dam should be told of it, if she does not know already. And if she does, it is possible she will have the answers you seek.” Once more, she held out her hands. “Will you come with me to the court, and speak with her?”

Somewhere in the back of Clary’s mind, an utterly irrational voice shrieked _You want me to meet your **mother**?!_ at a glass-shattering pitch. _Now?! In workout clothes? Bearing bad news about the Nephilim? Why??? Would you??? Do this??? To me?????_

_Oh Kore, and you said human/faerie relationships were ‘discouraged’, and you still WANT ME TO MEET YOUR MOTHER—_

“Of course,” she said calmly. Thinking, grimly: _the things I do for you, Simon_. She just hoped that he was okay, that he would be able to laugh about this with her very soon. “If you think it will help.”

“I do.”

Clary suppressed a sigh—there went any hope of getting out of it—and crossed over to the faerie princess. For Simon—and with Olianthe’s binding promise to protect her from other fae—she could do this. She could meet with the Queen.

Every rosette of sunlight she passed through had an almost tangible weight.

And then her datemate’s hands clasped hers, strong and gentle and cool as milk, tugging her carefully against the princess’ chest as the memory of the earth reached up and embraced them like wings, blue and green and gold.

***

_In the darkness, there is light._

_Xe burns. Xe blazes like a phoenix reborn wrong, the shape that means_ Simon _dissolved into flame-music-memory-screaming, and the light fills the dark place like a sun being born or dying. It is a tsunami of golden fire sweeping away the shadows and the ugliness, washing the assembled demons clean; it is an atom bomb of light dissolving all it touches to ash, burning away their blackness to reveal the silver beneath._

_Because it is so: scales and horns and twisted wings vanish like tarnish beneath a restorer’s hand and underneath them there is treasure, there are treasures, lustrous and shining and incomparable, unimaginable: xe burns gold and xyr Dragons flare antiphonal argent; like starlight cutting through smoke to find moonstones through the haze xyr flames reveal them and they incandesce in answer, incandescent. Harsh jagged lines are softened and smoothed by the blaze of astrogenous fire, gnarled limbs deliquescing into whirling streams of silver light arcing above and around like wings, like sterling rainbows; they are undone, remade, revealed, rank upon rank of them numberless as waves beneath the moon, the horde of monsters become a constellation of stars when seen in this other light._

_And Kashtokaz, whose wings are myriad now and fluid as water, gleaming,_ mångata _: Kasthokaz, who alone is silver with a golden heart, a scintillating core where the_ lilnilipah _anchors in parz essence. Kashtokaz, who, as Simon-but-not falls in on xemself and screams and screams and screams at the assault of autognosis, plerosis, self-schema shattering into self-schism—Kashtokaz leaps forward and catches xem, nebula-cloud wings enfolding the sun of xyr blinding radiance like hands cupping a nonpareil, starbeam-limbs clasping xyr flame-self to parz chest as closely, tightly, soothfastly as Janet ever held Tam Lin._

“Aoiveons _no, hush,_ fesharszi _, I’m sorry…”_

_Parz wings cradle and cut off the shining light like a veil drawn o’er the sun, so that only the underside of those wings are left gilded silver—the outer side ribbed and draconic once more, and like a curtain drawn over a hoard the echelons of demons beyond dim and darken, silver splendour smeared over with heart-flinching horror, a thousand points of niveous fire snuffed out by a winter wind._

_Not soon enough._

***

“There’s a fuck-ton of them now,” Cas muttered, peering through the binoculars at the building opposite. Where passers-by on the street below saw a run-down church, he saw something else entirely. The amulet at his throat glittered, thirteen rings of gold and a diamond nested at the centre. When he spoke, his words were gilded by a Brazilian accent. “It’s like a beehive in there. We’ll never get a chance at another binding circle with this many of the _fascistas_ paying attention.”

“Language,” the woman next to him said mildly. She might have been a statue of Isis; tall and proud and in her early forties, she looked a decade younger and bore the golden Egyptian axe on her back as though it were weightless. A sociolinguist, allowed the prize of dissecting her speech, would have declared it a mix of Cairene Arabic and Mexican Spanish; it flavoured her English heavily. Despite her tone, she watched the Institute as a lioness watches gazelle.

“Sorry, Captain,” Cas said, contrite.

She made a dismissive gesture. “We knew we weren’t likely to get a chance at a second circle. I’m more concerned that they found the last one.”

“It was the _ashipu_ who pointed it out to them.” The young Native man in the corner of the room sat cross-legged, a portable writing desk on his lap. Reports written by hand could not be hacked into by government bodies who didn’t know what was good for them.

“Lucio’s right, María,” Ana said. She caught and corrected herself at the older woman’s raised eyebrow. “Captain. It _was_ the _ashipu_ who pointed it out to them. The Shadowhunters are so oblivious, they could have tripped over it and not noticed.” Her Haitian accent was thick and sweet; she sounded her every word carefully to be sure the others could understand her.

“It does not occur to them that their bastions could be vulnerable,” Lucio said from his corner. His was the only accent native to these shores; someone who knew the voices of the tribes would recognise his as Zuni.

“It’s not like they have a great track record for noticing stuff anyway,” Cas said, without looking away from the binoculars. “The Nephilim couldn’t spot a werekodiak if it bit them on the—”

“Casimiro.”

“Sorry, Captain.”

Bent over his report, Lucio smiled.

María turned to the young woman beside her. “What do you think our main concerns should be at this point, Ana?”

Ana counted on her fingers. “Why the  _ashipu_ betrayed a sign of our presence to the Nephilim; whether she did it on purpose; and will the angelologists try to take the  _anunnaku_ from New York.”

“They would have to be pretty stupid to try and move it now it’s started feeding,” Cas said. “I felt it swallowing from _here_. They try and take it through a Portal and it’s going to eat it faster than Luc with my dad’s _brigadeiros.”_ Under his breath, he added, “Om nom nom, Portal. Part of any _anunnaku_ ’s five a day…”

Lucio looked up from his report. “I’ve never had your father’s  _brigadeiros.”_

“Well, you _should_ , they are _ungodly.”_

“Let’s not underestimate the stupidity of the Nephilim,” María said dryly, ignoring Cas’ antics. “If they try and the _anunnaku_ devours the Portal, wonderful: they won’t reach their destination, and the creature will be destroyed by its own greed. But _anunnaki_ are cunning. It might know better than to devour a Portal while journeying through it. In which case, it’ll find sanctuary in Idris, where we can’t reach it.”

This silenced them all for a moment.

“The Nephilim don’t make Portals,” Ana said. “They hire _ashipu-ene_ to do it for them. If the locals refused to work for them, the Nephilim would be stranded.” She shrugged. “And we have to talk to the _ashipu-ene_ anyway.”

“Exacerbating tensions between the Nephilim and the Spiral Court is not ideal,” María said. “But it may be our only option.” She nodded slowly. “Good. Casimiro, Lucio, as soon as Chiyŏng and Samuel return I want the two of you to take the measure of this city’s Nasaru-ene. I want to know what’s going on here. But don’t give yourselves away. We need to face the possibility that the Spiral Court may be protecting this _anunnaku_ for some reason.”

“Is that likely?” Ana asked.

“No. But unlikely does not mean impossible.”

The Captain might have said more, but a short, high sound warned that someone was approaching the door of the apartment. Lucio deftly set his lap desk to one side and flowed to his feet, reclaiming his wakizashi sword from where it had leant against the wall; Ana cross-drew a pair of knives from her belt, a khukuri in her right hand and a serpentine kris in her left; Cas unhooked the binoculars from around his neck and set them carefully on the windowsill, the tattoos visible on his neck and arms throwing black light as he reached for his own sai daggers. María reached behind her, unhooked her axe’s harness, and swung it like a scythe of gold and lapis to her side; by the time she had it in her grip Ana and Lucio were positioned on either side of the door, Cas at 8 o’clock to their 6 in the nearer corner. It left the Captain to stand before the door, a target for whatever sought to come inside.

They stood in perfect silence for elastic moments.

Until a fist hammering at the door broke the taut stillness. “It’s us, it’s only us,” Sam said through the wood. He sounded exhausted —and afraid. “Chi’s hurt.  _Perkele,_ just let us in!”

 Ana glanced through the door’s peephole, and nodded towards her Captain. Sheathing her kris, she laid her hand on the door, spread-fingered, and when the wards lit up in spiralling circles turned her palm a sharp 90 degrees. The lock popped, and the door swung open as she stepped back to let their teammates inside.

The man in his late twenties was white, with neatly-clipped dishwater hair and Nordic-blue eyes behind his glasses. Leaning heavily on his shoulder was the kitsune of their team, her eyes closed with pain and her skin clammy.

Swinging her axe back into its harness, María came forward and helped Sam get Chiy ŏ ng to the couch. Lucio slipped into the corridor to make sure they hadn’t been followed; Cas and Ana were already running for the first aid kit.

“What happened?” María demanded.

“One of the Shadowhunters was a sorcerer,” Sam—Samuel—said. He unslung the long, slender rifle from over his shoulder and set it down on the table, almost falling into a chair once it was out of his hands. “He spotted her, forced her to change and then to change back. He wasn’t gentle about it the second time.”

Cas, returning with the kit, swore viciously in Portuguese.

María looked grim. “Did you get his picture?”

Sam pulled his phone from his pocket, found the image, and slid the phone across the table. María caught it and scrutinised the face it showed.

“He’s young,” Ana said in surprise, looking over her shoulder.

“About your age, I’d guess,” María murmured. The young man in the photo was perhaps somewhere between Ana’s nineteen and Cas’ seventeen years; twenty at the very most. He was white, with dark hair and a lean frame; his face was a hard, sharp, sculpted thing. In his black Shadowhunter armour he looked like a knife in its sheath. “Anything distinctive about his gear?”

“Chi might have seen his family ring,” Samuel said. “I don’t know. I wasn’t close enough, I was playing sniper from across the street.” He nodded to the phone. “I took that with my scope. Give me a minute and some coffee, and I’ll start pulling CCTV footage.”

Ana went to start the coffee as Lucio returned as quietly as he’d left, nodding the all-clear to María.

“I need to speak with the Shemayet,” María addressed the room. “She needs to know about this sorcerer.” She shook her head, correcting herself. “We _all_ need to contact our Orders. If the Nephilim have begun studying magic, every sect needs to know it. Everybody take ten and phone home.”

“Um. That might have to wait,” Cas said, backing away from Chi on the sofa. When María and Lucio turned to look at him, they saw his amulet lifting away from his shirt, the diamond at its centre glowing a bright and dazzling white as the golden rings around it began to spin, fast and then faster. “We have a bigger problem.”

***

Clary had always known that the Seelie knowe was much larger than the parts she’d seen: the training halls where members of the court practised weapons she knew from fantasy stories if she knew them at all, Olianthe’s _galon_ apartments, and the corridors that connected the two (exactly _which_ corridors depended on the time of day one had been born at, the movements of stars not visible from the world Clary knew, and whether the knowe thought you a good singer or not. Since Clary had sung a _zemer_ for it, a style of song it had apparently never come across before, it always gave her the shortest and most beautiful route to her destination). So she was not too surprised, when the memory of the earth faded, to find herself in a part of it she’d never seen before.

She knew she was in the knowe, because there was no mistaking it as anything other than a faerie place. It was a chamber of living glass, all light and crystal, and standing inside it was like being within the embrace of a weeping willow; glittering tendrils dripped from the ceiling, sprouting delicate bells where natural branches would have leaves. More bells grew like fruit from the woven boughs of the walls, silver and sweet, and all of them softly chiming, their symphony one of sugar and starlight. There was no obvious source of light, but everything was bathed in a soft illumination that was music to Clary’s eyes.

“Beautiful,” Clary whispered.

A crystalline frond stroked her cheek, its bells cool kisses on her face.

Olianthe smiled. “You will charm the knowe into keeping you for its own, one of these days.” She tugged gently at Clary’s hand. “Come. I would not keep the Queen-my-dam waiting.”

“Yeah, about that,” Clary said, allowing herself to be led. “Is there any chance we could stop to change? So _I_ could change my clothes, I mean?”

“There is no need to stop.” The tilt of Olianthe’s eyes was amused. “I have told you before: the knowes are not truly part of your world. They belong to Annwn. Merely wish, and the knowe will answer. Certainly one it favours as it does you.”

“You mean, I can wish myself new clothes?” Isabelle was going to love that, if she didn’t know it already.

Olianthe gave one of her elegant, rippling shrugs. “At least the seeming of them.”

Brushing bell-hung branches out of way—though most of them swayed away from her of their own accord—Clary gave it a try, briefly closing her eyes and wishing for an outfit that would render her presentable for meeting the Seelie Queen of the People of Peace.

 _If you’re listening,_ she thought at the knowe, _I trust your judgement. Make me presentable, please?_

There was no spiralling cloud of glitter magicking her workout clothes into a frothy ballgown, no shining lights, no _bibbidi bobbidi boo!_ But between one step and the next, the _weight_ on her body changed, and Clary knew it had worked even before she opened her eyes.

The knowe had gowned her in the night. Her slacks and tank top had become a single-shoulder dress of deep sapphire blue, scattered with countless glittering points that moved of their own accord—stars, planets, moons, all dancing with regal slowness over her body. A kind of corset-belt of soft brown felt wrapped her waist comfortably, beaded in spirals, fringed in soft blue; the same fringing decorated her shoulder. Clipped to the belt was a chatelaine the shape of a fairytale castle, her magnifying glass hanging from it by a slender chain just the right length for her to reach comfortably. A gossamer wrap all the colours of twilight was pinned around her waist and draped behind her, whispering against her dress. And it wasn’t just her clothes; she didn’t realise her ponytail was gone until wisps of her hair fell into her eyes as she walked. When she raised her hand to it she found her hair loose about her shoulders, with some kind of diadem woven through it like a crown. Without a mirror she couldn’t be sure, but she couldn’t _feel_ any jewels on it, thank Kore. That would have been…

Wait, thought too soon. More charms like the ones hanging from her belt were threaded on ribbons from the diadem, at the back. They chimed when she moved.

 _They’re so jewels, aren’t they._ At least she only had her own familiar acorn pendant at her throat, rescued from the change to her clothes like her magnifying glass.

But her mother raised her to be polite; jewels or no jewels, she did her best to beam gratitude at the knowe. _I really appreciate the help!_

It was harder to avoid thinking ‘thank you’ than saying it. No surprise there.

Olianthe’s fingers tightened around Clary’s hand. “It has garbed you in Annwn’s stars,” she said hoarsely.

Clary ran her free hand over the skirt of her dress, marvelling at the thought of another world’s constellations gracing her skin—and then she was marvelling at the softness, because _wow_. The fabric looked like silk, but it felt softer than anything she’d ever felt.

They had stopped; Clary looked up, and found Olianthe standing close, and staring, her pupils narrowed to sharp slits.

“’Lianthe?”

“The knowe has garbed you in Annwn’s stars,” Olianthe repeated, and her voice was satin against Clary’s skin, soft and rough at the same time. “And even they barely do you justice.”

Clary’s throat tightened with the immediate urge to dismiss the compliment, to laugh it off, deflect it. But you couldn’t pretend it was not sincerely meant, even to yourself, with a faerie. They couldn’t lie. “You look beautiful too,” she said, wishing, not for the first time, that she had Olianthe’s gift for perfect words and easy, heartfelt poetry. _Beautiful_ did not do sufficient justice to the Seelie Queen’s daughter; she would stop hearts and breaths in rags, and she was not in rags now. If Clary was the night, then Olianthe was the sun, her sea-blue dress replaced with a wash of gold while Clary had her eyes closed. Over a tunic of amber velvet was fastened a plate of solid gold covering her collarbone and breasts, engraved with a herd of galloping unicorns, their horns picked out in gems; diamonds, mother-of-pearl, opals. Flowing leggings were bound with gold laces from the calf down, and the belt at her waist was more artwork than accessory, a winged dragon encircling her hips, biting its own tail to lock closed. Her vambraces had vanished, but at her side a dagger whose whorled hilt was an alicorn. There were gems and bells knotted in the fall of her hair.

Olianthe smiled. “You do me so much honour, Clary.” She made a twisting gesture with her hand, and when she proffered it to Clary, there was a firefly in it—the one Clary had sent with her message, presumably. “May I?”

Clary nodded, and Olianthe carefully tucked the little insect, not back in the acorn pendant, but inside Clary’s ear. “Thus may I guide you, when you meet my kin,” ’Lianthe said. “Now we must hurry on. ’Tis the knowe’s own fault for garbing you thus and stealing my breath, but the Queen-my-dam awaits us.”

Olianthe tracked a course for them—or perhaps the knowe did—that passed through only a handful of impossible rooms: a grotto lit with smokeless fire where the cave-paintings on the walls were not of people or bison, but dragons; a room without gravity where Clary and Olianthe had to kick off from one wall to reach the next, half-swimming, half-flying; another where everything, including the two girls, was upside down. They passed other faeries on the way; a person with long green nails reading from a book of crystal pages, elegantly poised on a velvet chair in the no-gravity room, and in a room with its own sky a person whose braid burned like fire was carefully painting a flock of white ravens black with a paintbrush. A cluster of people had gathered to listen to a pair of ephemeral twins playing instruments of silver and bone in a chamber filled with ball-joined, jewelled dolls; Olianthe had Clary cover her ears as they passed, but even so the strains of the melody seemed to twine around her heart and make it ache.

And they were all just dubbed _people_ in her mind, because after last night Clary was working hard not to assign genders to the inhabitants of the court. Olianthe had declared herself a girl, but her easy indifference to the issue made Clary suspect that, whatever the People of Peace thought about gender, it wasn’t anything like the attitudes Clary knew. She had been assuming faeries were either male or female, which was _stupid_ , that wasn’t even true for _humans_ so why would it be true for a people that weren’t human at all? And besides—none of the markers she knew for gender applied here. Again, long hair didn’t automatically denote a woman even for humans, but here _everyone’s_ hair was long and flowing in impossible colours, knotted and braided and decorated with beads and charms of bronze and glass and gold. _All_ the Seelie had sharp, elegant faces like the facets of jewels, and they were _all_ slender and straight as silver birches. There was nothing in their hips or how they walked to give her a hint; they all moved like deer, like dancers, divine in their grace. Those she saw in dresses one night wore pallazzo-style trousers the next and shimmering bodysuits of interlocked pieces of metal and stone the night after that. However the fae marked gender—if they did at all—it was by no system Clary could discern.

And then she had no more time to ponder it, because they had _arrived_.

Clary had visited Olianthe’s court—her mother’s court—every night for weeks now, but no matter how many times she saw it she never grew inured to its terrible, glorious, wholly unhuman beauty.

The moment she saw the throne room of the Seelie Court, she knew that she never would.

It was a like walking into a cathedral, a huge and sweeping space that reached hundreds of feet up, all pearlescent white stone and ivory and shining gold. Where Clary might have expected tapestries she saw carvings, every inch of every wall covered in incredible scrollwork, Celtic-looking knots and spirals and stylised people and animals, dragons the size of buses breathing scintillating fire that curled into flowers and birds, which became shooting stars which morphed into leaping fish which burst into butterflies, on and on and on in a never-ending monument to wonder. The air itself seemed to sparkle and flash; the entire chamber was filled with thousands upon thousands of hovering, slowly-revolving diamonds, the light coming from the walls themselves scintillating through the gems into clouds of rainbows, whose shifting, as the jewels moved, made the carvings seem to shift and stretch.

Or—

No.

They _were_ moving. Clary’s breath stuttered in her chest as the dragon stretched its wings and leapt aloft, scattering a flock of swans as it flew up the wall; the branches of a carved tree rustled as if in a wind, pomegranates falling from its canopy and tumbling into the midst of a pack of wolves. It was like the paintings of Hogwarts, but a thousand times as grand, as magical, as beautiful.

And high above their heads, on a mother-of-pearl platform floating at the precise centre of the room, the Seelie Queen.

Clary swallowed hard, feeling smaller than Thumbelina.

She and Olianthe ascended a wide stair of nacre steps, each hovering without apparent support a little above the last. There were other platforms suspended about the room, some higher than the Queen’s, some lower, but none as large. Most of them were empty, but a cluster of those above and behind the Queen’s central stage were populated by a series of tall, alien figures.

“Who are they?” Clary whispered. Grateful for all her nightly work-outs, that meant she could speak without gasping.

Olianthe looked pleased. “My sisters.”

Of course they were.

A little below the Queen’s dais, one of the steps widened into its own platform, and here Olianthe knelt, dropping gracefully to one knee and crossing her arms in an x across her chest, her palms on the wings of her collarbone. _‘Bow,’_ Clary heard, Olianthe’s voice whispering through the firefly, and Clary obeyed, bowing at the waist.

Someone spoke then, a brief ribbon of musical, lilting, entirely unintelligible words, and Olianthe rose to her feet, gesturing for Clary to straighten as well.

Even if the throne’s floor had been packed with people, Clary would have known the Queen instantly. The monarch of the Seelie Court—whom, the gendered implication of ‘Queen’ aside, Clary mentally dubbed ‘ze’ in an effort not to assume anything—was as beautiful as the room which housed zir throne, and as incredibly unhuman; seeing zir standing at the very heart of the knowe with an artist’s eye, Clary was struck by the realisation that the entire chamber had been built around zir like a house of worship around a deity, the carvings on the wall framing zir like the settings of a jewel, the nebula of suspended diamonds all around revolving around zir like countless glittering planets around a sun. The entire room was zir adornment, and even amidst all this splendour, ze outshone it all: tall and slender as the point of a crown, ze blazed like dawn upon the peak of Everest, with the cool, ageless grace of that empress among mountains embodied in every line of zir profile. Zir presence filled the hall like light, so bright and brilliant Clary’s eyes actually hurt to look at zir directly, as if she were standing before a star come to earth. A star clad in a deceptively simple gown of gleaming white, touched here and there with spirals of silver embroidery and subtle moonstones, accentuating that luminous poise rather than distracting from it. Against zir dress and the backdrop of the pale walls the floor-length fall of the Queen’s hair burned like a river of lava, the deep, primal red of fire and blood, so far beyond the mortal shade of Clary’s that it was hard to believe the two colours shared a name. Upon zir head was a headdress like a star-burst or many-petalled flower of silver and platinum, with multiple rows of sequentially-larger rays; a faceted crystal sphere the size of Clary’s fist was clasped at the nadir where the crown—for it could be nothing else—met the Queen’s brow.

Clary could not see zir face. A veil of glittering beads hung from the brim of the crown, shielding onlookers from the terrible glory of zir gaze, and Clary was grateful for it. She could feel the Queen’s regard like a heavy weight, and didn’t want to think about how much worse it would be if she could see those eyes looking at her.

 She wrapped her fingers tightly around the handle of her magnifying glass.

Two other figures stood on the Queen’s platform. On zir left was a pale figure swathed in flowing grey silks, whose—hair? hat? headdress?—was shaped like a great storm cloud, dripping long strands of crystalline raindrops that echoed the Queen’s veil. But Clary found the faerie on the Queen’s right far more interesting: a vivacious personage whose mass of styled and bedecked white hair would have been at home at Marie Antoinette’s court and whose lower body, beneath a bodice of deep blue velvet, was that of a mechanical equine, a strange and beautiful thing of gold and silver and crystal, trailing a mass of sapphire velvet more like a cloak than a tail. 

 _‘Virdiridon and Iphivania, the Queen-my-dam’s advisors,’_ Olianthe whispered.

 Clary wanted to ask why Iphivania had an equine prosthetic, but there was no firefly in Olianthe’s ear to convey her questions.

“Silariel- _eresh_ , I present to you one who holds my heart knotted in her hair,” Olianthe said then. Her words had the weight of ritual, and Clary guessed she was missing some of the nuances. It seemed a very formal way of saying _this is my datemate_ , anyway. “She comes bearing news of the Nephilim that I judged it needful for you to hear.”

“She comes dressed in our stars,” one of ’Lianthe’s sisters said. There were six of them, arrayed behind the Queen as if ze were a prism, and they the colours ze had made of a beam of light—though they were not a rainbow. The one who had spoken stood at the Queen’s immediate right, and wore white like zir mother, but trousers and a sleeveless tunic instead of a dress. Hundreds of pearls and opals made constellations in zir ebony hair, and alone of the sisters, zir face was hidden like the Queen’s; two feathery coils of zir hair had been fixed in complex spirals before zir eyes, strung with tiny seed pearls. “How are we to read this omen, Olianthe- _ahatki?”_

 _‘Siarien,’_ the firefly whispered to Clary. _‘The Queen-my-dam’s heir.’_

“’Twas the knowe that garbed her, Siarien,” Olianthe said aloud. “I would take that as a good omen, myself.”

There was a stir among the gathered faeries, silenced instantly when the Queen raised zir hand. “One the knowe has welcomed is not to be turned away,” ze said. If the flutes Clary had passed on the way here had hurt her heart, the Queen’s voice threatened to break it in two, it was so painfully beautiful; Clary had to grit her teeth so as not to gasp. “Little as it pleases me to see one of my jewels about the neck of a black swan.”

Before Clary could work out if she’d just been insulted, she saw the beads of the Queen’s veil tremble as ze turned in Clary’s direction. “Speak, mortal, and I will hear.”

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Clary repeated what she had told Olianthe. The cool metal of her magnifying glass anchored her, made it easier to bear the focussed attention of the Seelie royal family, the strange, heart-rending beauty of the living walls and the gem in the Queen’s crown, like the heart of a star caught in crystal. Too, Olianthe’s presence at her side was a bulwark, a breakwater shielding Clary’s earthy self from the ocean of the fae; Clary imagined ’Lianthe’s golden heart braided into her hair, and stood straighter.

It did not take long to tell, and when she was done Clary fell silent, refusing to lower her eyes. She was not one of the Queen’s subjects; she had bowed to be polite, but she was not going to _cower_.

She couldn’t tell if the Queen was impressed or offended by this, or if ze cared at all.

“The Nephilim are not the only ones disturbed,” another of ’Lianthe’s siblings said. _‘Irlaridí,’_ murmured the firefly. Ze had graceful antlers of bone and mother-of-pearl sweeping back from zir pale blue hair, hung with bells and twined about with apple blossoms; Clary had no idea if the horns were decoration or if they were a part of zir. Ze was robed in blue, a bodice of sapphire velvet dissolving into swirling gossamer skirts of a dozen paler shades. “The Cousins are awake and restless, for all that they should slumber while the sun crowns the sky. The shadows writhe with them. Might not the same event have agitated Raziel’s children and Samael’s?”

“Perhaps the Nephilim have discovered what has called so many of our Cousins to this city,” said a faerie in black and green, gleaming gold tattoos winding like woad up zir arms and throat and face, bursting into confections of gold wire and amber in zir emerald hair. _‘Nelesediar.’_ “The mortal saw them returning from battle, after all.”

“Had they destroyed whatever the Cousins value so dearly, the shadows would not writhe, but kill all who came near,” another contradicted, making a dismissive gesture with a hand that ended in crystal claws. _‘Hirsulerune.’_ Tiny mirrors were woven into zir silvery hair, and zir tunic was pale lavender and mist-grey, a waist-cloak of amethyst trailing behind zir. “And this city would not survive the night.”

“It may yet not,” said one whose golden hair was twisted into curving ram-like horns, whose crimson velvet robe was embroidered with dragons. Simply dressed, in this company. _‘Avarilmaer.’_ “We will not know ’till evenfall.”

“Would it be such a loss?” Irlaridí asked coolly, without any emotion Clary could discern. “I for one would not weep to see the humans pruned like the strangling vines they are.”

“At least have the courtesy,” Siarien said, far more coldly yet, “to not speak so before one whose city it is.”

Ze meant her, Clary realised. And wondered, sickly, if that meant Siarien disagreed with Irlaridí’s apparent disdain for humans.

“Humanity aside,” Hirsulerune added, “you presume much, Irlaridí dear, if you think we could weather such a storm as that unscathed. Whatever it is the Cousins treasure so, I do not think their wrath at its destruction would pass us by so neatly as you hope.”

“Might the _cairde_ be at the root of this?” suggested someone the firefly identified as _Fionrawen._ Zir gown was made of actual water; Clary could see koi swimming around in it, and a beta fish. For all that, the body beneath it was indistinguishable. “They have not yet presented themselves to the Court. Perhaps the excuse for their rudeness is that they have finally drawn the attention of the Nephilim.”

“That would certainly put the Shadowhunters in a dither,” drawled the only one of them with red hair, darker than that of their Queen— _Kheylandrnil_ , came the whisper, with hair like a gout of blood spilling from a cut throat, and a mouth like the inside of a pomegranate. Zir body was sheathed in silver like a knife, rubies and garnets like flames or blood tracing galaxies across the fabric.

The others laughed, but Clary noticed that neither the Queen nor zir advisors had said a word, any of them. And though she had no idea who or what the _cairde_ were, _Samael’s children_ could only mean demons. In Hebrew school, they’d taught her that Samael rejoiced at Moses’ death, that he was Michael’s eternal opposition, the _chief of Satans_ ; when she’d looked him up on her own in the wake of discovering the real-life Nephilim, she found that her teachers had undersold it. Samael was the ultimate evil, who joined with Lilith—and, depending on the source, his three other wives—to beget the entire race of demons.

“They are not yet as rude as the Nephilim,” Nelesdiar said. “Myself, I hope Dôn turns unkind eyes from their shadows. Make mock as best please you, but should the Nephilim wipe the _cairde_ from the memory of the earth, we will be wholly dependent on the Nephilim alone.”

“A terrifying prospect indeed,” Kheylandrnil said dryly—and yet, faeries couldn’t lie. Did that mean ze really did think it terrifying? Or was sarcasm a loophole in the truth rule? “Truly, one we should pray Dôn averts.”

Faerie sarcasm didn’t matter. These royals were saying—what? That Samael’s Children were their cousins? Clary flashed back to Olianthe’s unwillingness to step into direct sunlight, and only with effort pushed the thought away. If the fae were half-angel, half-demon like the Nephilim said, then obviously that made demonkind their cousins, of a kind. It didn’t mean Olianthe was one herself.

They were saying—that there were more demons in the city than usual. That they were awake during the day, when they shouldn’t be. That they were _restless_.

“The Shadowhunters don’t know this.” Only when the princes/ses all turned to look at her did Clary realise she’d spoken aloud, but she refused to quail. There was something cold and awful building behind her breastbone, and it pushed the words up and out of her throat. “They think there are _less_ demons, they think the demons are _gone_. There’s been no attacks for weeks—”

Was this what she’d seen? Had the Shadowhunters outside the Institute been fighting demons, despite the daylight? Had they been caught somewhere dark and dim enough for Infernal claws to find them?

Did they _know?_

One did not make demands of Queens. Particularly not fae ones. Clary knew her mythology, and so she did her best to choose her words carefully. “Please, will you tell them? They don’t know, they’re not prepared. If the—” She almost said _demons,_ then wondered if that was rude here. “—Cousins are massing, a lot of people could die.”

“And what makes you think the Nephilim will listen to such as us, mortal girl?” Virdiridon asked. Zir voice was as cold and biting as winter rain. “They have had centuries to make clear how little they value our opinions.”

It was a fair point. But Clary wasn’t backing down. “Simon will listen,” she promised wildly. Knowing it was true. She wasn’t so sure the assembled Nephilim would listen to _Simon_ , but given how little the Shadowhunters cared for Downworlders, he probably had a better chance than any faerie. “Simon Morgenstern. He’ll care about what you say.”

The beads of the Queen’s veil shivered, and even through it Clary felt the moment the Queen’s attention focussed solely on her. “We do not interfere with the one known as Simon Morgenstern.”

It had the weight of law, that pronouncement, and Clary blinked, confused and uncertain. “Why?”

“We do not interfere with the one known as Simon Morgenstern,” the Queen repeated.

That…wasn’t weird at all, but Clary put it aside. She would ask ’Lianthe about it later. “Will you help me find him?” she asked, greatly daring. But that was why she had called Olianthe in the first place, after all. “I can tell him what you said. I’ll make sure he hears it. But I can’t get hold of him right now.”

“She was questing for him when I diverted her here,” Olianthe said suddenly. “She came only to bring us this news, at a cost to her search and perhaps her friend.”

“There is obligation.” Siarien, on zir platform. “So I judge.”

“I agree,” the centaur-faerie said. Iphivania. Zir voice was unexpectedly rich and sensual, for all that zir expression was a solemn one. “The girl is not your subject, Radiance. She was not bound by duty nor acted from vassalage. A debt is owed, lest the scales remain unbalanced.”

“Have the Court beholden to a _mortal?”_ Fionrawen exclaimed. “That is one which will weigh like steel. Give her what she wants, that we may be free of it.”

Virdiridon looked to zir Queen. Whatever ze saw beneath the veil, it must have been enough, for the rain-gemmed faerie brought zir attention to bear on Clary. “The one known as Simon Morgenstern is within the New York Institute. He was taken there by his own kind, and so far as we know they have done him no harm.”

The careful phrasing hooked at her. “Did someone else hurt him?”

“He was bloodied when he emerged from the Silent City,” Siarien told her, before Virdiridon could—or perhaps because Virdiridon would not. Clary had no way to tell. “And he was unconscious when the doors of the Institute closed behind him. More than that is beyond the ken of the Court.”

The cold, horrible shock neatly saved Clary from her automatic _thank you_ : it stopped her breath dead. Bloodied—the City of Bones, that grim Shadowhunter necropolis—unconscious—what had _happened?_

“I appreciate your sharing your knowledge with me,” she choked out after a pause. Heedless of how it looked, or if she was being rude, she looked up at Olianthe. “I need to go and find him. Please.”

“You will not be allowed into the Institute,” Olianthe said, low. “They will hurt you if they learn you know their secrets. The Nephilim are not kind to those they are meant to protect.”

Clary remembered the Lightwoods telling her and Simon about the fraternization rule, that Izzy could be stripped of her runes just for reading _Harry Potter,_ just for being friends with Clary. And she knew Olianthe was right.

“Either way, I can’t stay here,” Clary managed. She didn’t want to, and she didn’t think Olianthe’s family wanted her to either. “Please take me back.”

“If you wish it, then it will be so.” Olianthe turned to her mother, and knelt again. “If I have permission to leave.”

“Go,” the Queen said. “Take your black swan from my Court, Olianthe.”

Olianthe bowed her head in acquiescence. When she rose, she nodded at Siarien.

Clary didn’t miss Siarien’s subtle nod in return. But she had other things to think about.

***

Isabelle’s body remembered the sensation before her mind did, the explosion of invisible fire breaking against her runed skin like a wave of molten gold, searing and glorious and too strange to be either pain or pleasure. The somatic memory drew the whole _agela_ towards the door before they remembered that they could not leave, and the realisation was a seraph blade twisting as it pierced.

Their runes sang like church bells, reverberating on their skin, ringing and ringing and ringing.

Because Isabelle remembered it her _agelai_ knew what was happening, knew where the sweet agony of the call would pull them if they followed it—if they _could_ ; the door, the guard, there was no way they could go to it, to the angel screaming—they could _hear_ it, hear it screaming with Simon’s voice, a high inhuman sound cry that went on and on and _on,_ cutting through the Institute like a sword and roping Izzy-Alec-Jace like lassos of barbed wire and honey, pulling, dragging, spiralling higher and higher on wings of steel and gold, beating in their heads like a terrible thunder-woven heart—

The surge came again, and again, a pummelling tide like the crashing waves of a storm, and Max was trying to ask them something, Alec’s phone was ringing and they could hear neither, register neither over the shrieking need to _go,_ to answer, to fly to Simon’s side and hold him through the flames of heavenly fire, to staunch and soothe whatever agony made the creature in him cry aloud like the world’s ending as best as any human could—

The _agelai_ were dragged under by the current, swept together by the backstroke of the wings in their skulls; a dizzying psychic tornado that blew their still-fragile boundaries of self apart like gossamer. It was as Sariel that they flung themselves at the door, unable to remember unable to _care_ that escape would damn them in the eyes of the Inquisitor, the Clave. There was only the screaming, only the need-dread-terror of knowing Simon was in pain, a thin mortal shell that had to be breaking apart around that solar-storm light, that celestial anguish; honour and religion and love all knotted to choking around their throats, their Self, and they nearly tore the handle from the door with rattling it, clawing at it, if they’d had even a single stele they would have blasted it down without hesitation, without being _able_ to hesitate—

And on their palm the angel’s mark echoed every shockwave, blazing beneath their glove like a burning brand, afire with a pain that was not pain.

Sariel glanced down at it, seeing the glowing mark in their mind and remembering—like light, like lightning, searing through memories and maybes faster than any single human ever could—Alec’s raised hand before the Institute doors, the hundred and eight locks springing open at his gesture, his will—

_Even once their parents had returned—_

Before the thought had finished forming they lifted that hand before the door and _willed_ , wanted, commanded as Alec had commanded the Institute all the time that Hodge was gone—

And felt as much as heard the lock give.

But before they could touch the handle it moved, pressed downwards from the other side. The door swung open, and from three sets of eyes Sariel saw their father’s shocked face, the keys in his other hand, the prone figure of their guard on the floor, a bundle of clothes under his arm.

Robert stepped aside before they could speak. “Go,” he said, and they did not pause to ask him why, only flew past him, ran as if they had wings on their heels, the path they needed spelled out in gold in their heads and under their feet, singing in their Marks.

Screaming.

Corridors, stairs, doors, the blurred impressions of other people bent double and clutching their heads under the onslaught—

And then they had reached the Infirmary.

There were guards at the door, but they were on their knees, blood trickling between the fingers that covered their ears. There were golems, but they stepped aside for Sariel, dipped their heads; Sariel had no eyes for them.

They remembered what Izzy had seen, called here this morning by the same entity: Simon’s body lit from within, the angel’s hand raised against Robert and Syr Bellesword. It had been awake, and angry, and terrifying in its glory.

This was nothing like that. This was like stepping into Hell, all fire and chaos, rabid and blinding and thick with the stink of hot iron and storms and blood, and drawing it all together to a soul-piercing point the _screaming_ , the unhuman screaming that hadn’t stopped, that went on and _on_ and without pause, without breath. It was a maelstrom of light and darkness, fiery light searing like the heart of a sun breaking across Sariel’s faces like the blow of an axe, light with weight and heft and _heat,_ and cutting through the light a storm of whirlwind-wings, shadows curved like scythes and scimitars beating-snapping-writhing, not mere shapes on a wall but tangible whips of black oil and gold fire alike that lashed and cut and burned: scorch marks marred the ceiling and walls, beds were overturned, figures in the robes of angelologists scattered like dolls on the floor, some broken, some bleeding.

And at the heart of it—in the centre of that vortex of light and dark, where the light was bright enough to burn Sariel’s eyes and the shadows dark enough to drown in—at the heart of it was Simon, a creature of tissue paper and silk caught in the gale of power. He thrashed like a child trapped in a nightmare on a gore-streaked cot, his mouth a raw red hole and his face streaked with blood from his eyes, his nose, his ears; his skin might have been glass for all it hindered the radiation streaming from his core, that terrible incandescent fire and decalescent blackness pouring out of him as if he had a portal to Heaven and Hell both in his bones. Someone had tried to tie him down; three or four wide straps hung limply from the bedframe, but only one had been secured around his waist, not enough to still him, not enough to protect him from whatever storm raged inside his skin.

He still hadn’t stopped screaming to breathe—

That decided it, if decision needed to be made. Off to one side, the Inquisitor belatedly spotted them; she shouted something, but the angel’s awful wail drowned her out and Sariel ignored her. They dove into the storm and they were the only one who could possibly have done it, six eyes to watch the strobing cyclone of shadows and fire and the power of three minds to plot and trace their burning arcs, to duck and weave and twist between them as in a hail of arrows, dancing as if between lightning bolts, tasting ozone when one sheared too close, smelling smoke when a sheet of flame came near enough to kiss their cheek; and all the while their Marks crying out on their skins, the _si_ _̱m_ _ádi ang_ _élou_ a molten gem on their hand—

There was no room for three nearer Simon’s body, where the spaces between those strange unearthly bolts was so much narrower, and there had never been any question of which body to send forward. It was their Jace-self that reached the side of the bed while the others watched its back, and their Jace-hand that reached out, carefully-quickly, to touch Simon’s face, heedless of how his cheek burned like hot glass. There was only the gaping wound of Simon’s mouth, the agony writ in blood on his face, the driving compulsion to make it _stop,_ make it all stop, to let Simon _breathe_ —

The moment they touched him one became two: the power reverberating in their runes surged to unbearable, soul-shaking heights like an electrical current being made whole and Jace was torn free of his _agelai_ like a ribbon being ripped from a braid, ungentle and yet silken. The shock of it sent him gasping to his knees, dizzy and aching and alight with something unnameable, flooded with the unspeakable. In an instant of rapture he glimpsed the workings of the world, light and light and light going on forever, an eternity of gemstones weaving together in endless patterns to create the world, every world, a universe of stardust and every shining mote was singing, Singing, _oh Angel_ —

And in the Song he heard the silence, and realised the screaming had stopped.

It would have been so easy to never come back, to fall into the celestial music and wholly become it, dissolve into it. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to simply let go, and cease to be, and become everything, instead.

But the _parabatai_ Marks he bore anchored him, and that silence drew him back, and the real world was real again as Simon drew a deep, ragged breath like a man saved from drowning, and nirvana could never matter more than this.

The screaming had stopped. The angel’s writhing wings (if such they were) still flashed and snarled above and around him, but Simon was no longer screaming, was panting deep, sobbing breaths and it was better, it was enough. Jace’s hand was still on Simon’s face; his graceless fall had turned Simon’s head to the side, towards him, and the sight of it—

Jace would remember the sight of it until the day he died.

Simon’s gaze was bright and blind, his eye sockets full of spiralling light and dark, black and gold like oil and water; his lashes were red with blood, his cheeks wet and writ with it, and Jace forgot to fear those wings, forgot what he had said in the Silent City and why, forgot the angel itself as he leaned close and prayed for Simon to hear him, buried somewhere in the fire and the dark and the blood—

“I’m here, _aikane_ , I’m here.” His voice shook, every dark space in his head echoing with the memory of those screams, with the sound of such unimaginable agony, but he only pressed himself closer, drew Simon a little bit nearer, touched his free hand to Simon’s dark hair—the only part of him unaltered by whatever the angel was doing, neither afire nor shadowed, just simple and soft and human. It made Jace’s heart ache. “I’ve got you, I have you, do you hear me? I’m here, you’re safe, you’re not alone, it’s all right—it’s all right, _aikane,_ love, I’m here, I’m here and I’m not letting you go—”

His fingers burned, his eyes burned, his throat burned, but Jace could no more have stopped than he could have caught the moon in his hands.

“Don’t let go, Simon,” he whispered. “Don’t let go, stay with me, I don’t know where you are but you have to hold on. You have to come back to me, _aikane,_ dearling, dearest; you have to come back to me from where you are—”

It was like bleeding, this flow of words; they spilled out of him in a torrent of copper and pain, soft and desperate, tender and pleading; pleading for Simon to hear him, to keep breathing, to claw his way back to Jace as he had every time before, and the fear that this time, this time Simon wouldn’t—

Couldn’t—

It broke his heart, that terror, the dread, the hoarse struggle of Simon’s every breath and the feverish writhing of his fragile, beloved body, the blindness of his eyes and the pain in his face—it was grinding Jace’s heart to dust and the shards of it caught in his throat, ripped him to pieces and he bled more, bled everything, promised anything to any god who would listen, if only Simon would

_Come_

_Back_

“Come back to me, _aikane,_ come back, come back, _come back to me—”_

***

_The darkness is not empty, and the aurulent light Kashtokaz fights to conceal is a beacon: beyond the ranks of the Dragons, deep in the black, leviathans stir, alerted by the screams that cut through this realm like a sword, like lightning. The darkness shudders and roils with their movements, like water echoing with the gestures of kraken; it crashes like waves against the gathered demons, a heavy, crushing pressure._

_But their prince does not, cannot feel it, cannot comprehend anything beyond the nightmare-memories, the fever-dream truths. They burst through xem like machine-gun fire, and silvered darkness spirals through xyr fire-form in their wake, blossoming like orchids, silver and black spreading through gold like blood in water. Sunlight and moonlight and midnight twisting together like a Celtic knot, sick and bright and terrible, and Kashtokaz struggles to contain xem as xyr form roils like a storming ocean, still wailing, still screaming—_

“Nanaeel, aoiveons _, hush, I have you, you do not need to wake yet, you do not need to remember this.” Parz cupped wings fold tighter around xem, clasping xem close, like a child, like a lover. “Let it go, let it be, it was not your fault, it was never once your fault…”_

_Xe shakes, and shakes apart: xe is lashed by memories that blur into phantasms and back again, ephialtes of the soul, and_

_Xe is on a cot in the Institute looking at a stranger’s face, and_

_Xe is walking on an endless shore of crimson sand, and_

_Xe is in a thousand-thousand cities and they are all burning, they are all falling, xe is flying and xe is plummeting down, xe is revelling in the bloodshed and xe is drowning in it, xe is the hand on the hilt and the hand catching the blade to halt its scythe-swing and xe is the sword itself, the Sword xemself—too many pieces and too many parts, disparate and discordant, the Song turned to Silence in xyr_ bulmoni _-mouth, choking, suffocating, the guilt-the blood-the laughter the remembering, xe remembers it_ all—

 _Remembers,_ _and can do naught but scream beneath the onslaught, naught but scream for the horror and abomination of it, can do naught but_ scream _—_

_Scream and scream—_

_Until two lodestars ignite amidst the blitzkrieg, radiant, resplendent, thus;_

_In one place, in one shard of self: a hand on a cheek, callused fingers and a rune-song familiar as a lullaby, foreign as a prayer, cutting like water through fire to anchor xyr against the storm, anchor xyr in xemself—_

_In one place, in one shard of self: a wealth of silver_ upaahni _-wings lacing, tangling with xyr own, intertwining like fingers, like hearts. Drawing xyr back to the now, the here, to xyr Shield’s embrace, and xe falls shudderingly silent, falls into Kashtokaz’s hold like a star collapsing in on itself._

_Xemself._

“Oia i vaoan?” _xe whispers._ “Brgdauran zirdo?” Is this real? Am I dreaming? _Xe doesn’t know how to tell anymore, has lost count of how many times figures from the past—the present—the future have manifested in xyr dreams. That is all the dreams_ are _, reflections of what is and could be—_

 _And what was. Over and over again, what was, what has been, what xe has_ done _—_

 _“No,_ aoiveons, _no,” Kashtokaz croons. “You’re not dreaming. But we don’t have long.” As if to underscore parz words, another dark wave breaks against them all, Dragons and Shield and Sword—and this time their prince seems to recognise it for what it is; the light of xyr flames turns colder, harder, the curls and whorls of tri-coloured fire sharpening slowly into a host of glittering razors._

“Adokaz.” _Kashtokaz calls xyr attention back, coaxing as one might a wild beast; easy, crooning, tender. “Where are you? You need to tell me where you are, star-heart, so I can find you.”_

 _Fire has no eyes, but if xe did they would be blank and glazed, gilded and uncomprehending._ “Kures. Zirdo kures.”Here. I’m here.

 _“No,_ Adokaz, _not here.” Gently, so gently, Kashtokaz combs silver tendrils through xyr flames; fingers stroking through curls. “In the waking, in the_ caos _. Where is your body?”_

“Gnay ipé ol…” I don’t… _Xe tries, struggling, adrift. There are just too many possibilities, too many memories and maybes, a trillion places and faces that could be, that were, that will be. Which one, which one is right and how can xe tell?_ “Ol gnay ipé orn, ipamis ol, ipamis ol—” I don’t know, I can’t, I can’t—

_“Hush, sssh.” Kashtokaz hisses—not the savage sound of rage or battle, but soft, silken, soothing. Demonsong, an Infernal’s lullaby. “Sssh, it’s all right, it’s all right. What about your eyes? Can you show me what you see?”_

_This is easier; a hand on a cheek like a path through a maze, like a signal fire in the dark. Xe shares the seeing, seeming, images and impressions travelling through xyr wing-limbs to Kashtokaz’s like electricity through synapses where they are twined together: gold eyes in a gold face, angelic runes, a white ceiling streaked with scorch marks._

_But it is the face that makes the Shield hiss again, this time with surprise. “And here I thought you lost,” par murmurs. “But you found one of them yourself, didn’t you? Your Mother will be glad. Good.” Without letting xem go, par breaks their connection, gently disentangling the nerve-like sparks of light and self. “That’s enough, star-heart. You did so well, but you can rest now. I’ll find you, and keep you safe, and this time it will work. I promise.”_

_If xe had the strength, xe would sob. If there were words, xe would call xyr Shield a liar, but there is no room in xem for words; they are crushed to coal beneath the weight of dead worlds, and the thought of going on is unbearable. It has to stop, it has to end, all xe wants is for it to end for good, make it stop, make it STOP, xe can’t do this anymore, xe hasn’t been able to do it for eons, and yet it goes ever on and on, on and on and make it stop, make it_ stop, _Song and Stars just let it_ end _…_

 _Please, please just let it_ end _._

 _“I promise,” Kashtokaz whispers, “I_ promise _you this is the last time, the very last. You need only hold on a little longer and it will end, it will, I swear it will, I will make it end. We are so close now,_ aoiveons _, it is so nearly over. Only hold on a little longer for me, please, for me,_ Adokaz, _just a little longer…”_

“Agé,” _xe says._

No _._

“Ipamis ol,” _xe says. “I can’t, I can’t, Kashtokaz please,_ please _, I can’t do it again. I’m not strong enough, I never was, I can’t be this anymore!”_

_The storm in the dark is building with every moment, waves of pressure-presence coming faster and faster as the Sword’s left-hand kin gather and close in. The storm will break, soon, and when it does the darkness will split asunder in black fire and ichor; the Dragons are many, but too few for what will come. They cannot linger, and yet none of them flee._

_No Shadowhunter would believe it, but they will not leave their prince in this state._

_Kashtokaz knows it, and parz wings twine tighter about parz prince’s, an alchemical marriage of Infernal and Not._

_“You can,” par says fiercely. “You are the Sword of the King, the Prince of Stars, Hope of the Misbegotten. You found us a home, you brokered the Peace. You can do this and you_ will, _because if you fall Silent I will fall with you, if you go into the_ teloah _-oblivion I will be at your side, if the Sword is broken then xyr Shield shatters with xyr. And because without you your people are damned.”_

_Fire has no eyes, but if xe did xe would close them now, unable to bear this truth atop all the others._

_“Cruel Shield,” xe whispers._

_“Even from yourself I will guard you,_ Adokaz.” _Fire has no brow, but par leans forward and moonlight mingles with xyr gold-silver-blackness. “Do it for me,” par says again, softly. “Do it for us,_ Nanaeel. _Please. We need you still.”_

_“Cruel,” xe whispers again. And—shudders, firelight flickering as if in a winter wind. “Yes,” xe says, helplessly. “I will try. I should not love you so much, this much. I should not be—willing to risk this risk, for your sakes. But the Silence will have to damn you itself, because I cannot._

_“Only make me a promise for a promise, Shield. Guard this world from me. Don’t let me— Don’t let me become— Not again. Never again. Please. Promise me.”_

_“I am the Sword’s Shield, not the world’s,” par says. “I will never strike you down, even if I could.”_

_“Kashtokaz—”_

_“Shh,” par croons, “it’s all right, star-heart, it’s all right. I’ll find you in the waking, and keep you safe, and it will be all right.”_

_“Kashtokaz!”_

_But par is singing softly, a melody sweet as a lullaby and fierce as the thunder—an ariette that makes the darkness around them reverberate like struck metal and catches up the prince’s fire like a crystal lantern closing around a flame. It is a spellsong woven by one even a Prince of Stars must bow before, spun and given to the Sword’s Shield by The Fire That Lights Herself, and xe is helpless before it._

_There is only—_

_A small, hard charm Kashto presses into xyr grip, folds xyr ‘fingers’ around, and_

_A beloved stranger’s voice, saying ‘come back to me, come back—’, and_

_For a single instant the weight, the weight of being forced to live, so heavy xe cannot be beneath it—_

_And then xe is gone, and Kashtokaz with xem, and the Dragons with them both._

_When the night-storm breaks, and Princes of Hell descend upon the place where their prey had been, they find nothing at all._

***

Inconsequential, meaningless snapshots came to Jace through his _agelai_ ’s eyes, pieces like shards of broken pottery in a Roman ruin; hands lowering from ears, figures picking themselves up off the floor, the Inquisitor striding forward with her eyes flashing like seraph blades. “How did you—get them out of here! Get _him_ away from Symeon!”

He saw-felt Alec and Izzy bar her way, unarmed but unmoving; felt Izzy’s words almost as his own as she said, “Inquisitor, it’s _working.”_

She was not wrong. Jace let it all slip away from him, the rest of the world fading like a half-remembered dream, but somewhere far away was the knowledge that what Izzy said was true: slow as continental drift, something was changing. He held Simon as if he could reach through the fire beneath his skin and draw him home, clasp his wrist and guide him through the labyrinth of light and dark back to the world, and his words wove their own spell; he had not yet been struck by the angel’s wings because the whip-cracks of fire and darkness had slowed, eased. They drifted in place now like underwater vines, occasionally twitching or clenching into spirals, but no longer thrashing. Simon’s body still bled, but it did not convulse quite so badly as it had done before, and Jace stroked Simon’s hair and crooned to him, murmured whatever soothing thing he could think of.

Called and called and called for him to come back.

A woman with the winged key of the Secretseekers and a leg of steel and _adamas_ put her hand on the High Inquisitor’s arm, holding her back. She shook her head at the Inquisitor’s sharp glance, and the Inquisitor subsided. But the Secretseeker’s gaze was fixed on Jace, unblinking.

His _agelai_ ’s unease couldn’t touch him.

There was only the alchemy of dread slowly transmuting into hope, lead into soft, fragile gold, as Simon’s breaths came steadier, and more easily. As the wings curled in on themselves, retracting, curlicues of gilt and ebony. As the wracking convulsions came further and further apart, until it seemed safe to hope they would not come again. As the bleeding from Simon’s eyes slowed to a trickle, and then stopped entirely.

There was only Simon’s sharp gasp, and his spine curving like a whip, and the light in him snuffing out like a sun dying, taking the strange pleasure-pain-pressure in their runes with it.

There was only relief like rain and love like an ocean as Simon saw him, and knew him, and said his name.

***

“Wait wait wait,” Cas said sharply. “Something’s—it’s calming down. Wait.”

 _“Annunaki_ don’t just _calm down,”_ Samuel protested. “Nothing stops them going nova but a binding!”

“Well, nobody explain that to this one, because there’s too many witnesses to draw another binding circle!” Ana said, glancing out the window.

“Guys, _shut up,”_ Cas snapped. His eyes were black as ink, watching the spinning rings of his amulet with unblinking focus, reading in them the impossible. “It’s real. It’s easing down.”

He blew out a breath of relief. “Guess New York gets to stand another day.”

***

_BOOM._

It came crashing like thunder, like storming surf, resounding in near every room of the Institute. Not in the Infirmary, no, for in places as busy as Institutes were apt to be the rooms of healing were soundproofed, to guard their patients’ rest; and not in most of the bedrooms, either, for the sun was still high in the sky and in the normal course of things all Shadowhunters beneath the Institute’s roof would be sleeping, gathering strength for the night to come. But the sound of someone at the doors swept into every other corner in a flood, from the greenhouse on the roof to the cellars that had once been prison cells under the ground, and in the wake of the angel’s screams there were many who had to clutch at still-pained and fragile ears and guard them against it.

 _BOOM_.

Maryse’s ears were still ringing slightly, but she swept through the entrance hall like an empress, and if the knots of Shadowhunters and scholars drew away from her like lords from leprosy rather than as subjects from their queen, still she held her head high. She had taken the time to clean the blood from her ears, if she had bled at all; she stood cool and composed as a marble statue as the 108 locks of the great doors came undone at her imperious gesture, and waited to greet whoever had come.

_“Lucian?!”_

Lucian Graymark gave a wolf’s grin that was no grin at all. “Maryse. Where,” he snarled, “is my son?”

* * *

 

NOTES

 

A witch ball is usually a hollow sphere of coloured glass that is hung in windows as a charm against witches or witchcraft. Within modern witchcraft, witch balls are sometimes filled with herbs and other ingredients to bring blessings on the household, or as active spells. That’s the way in which Catarina is using it.

A cinnamalogus is a mythological creature colloquially known as the cinnamon bird, who, predictably, builds its nest out of cinnamon. The story goes that when spice hunters/sellers wanted cinnamon, they would knock a cinnamalogus’ nest out of its tree with lead weights to sell the sticks.

Austėja is a Lithuanian goddess of bees, flowers and honey, friendship, the family unit, and the sun. A lot of her rituals revolve around friendship and marriage; she’s a really wonderful goddess.

Ma’at is the Egyptian goddess of truth and justice. As if that wasn’t badass enough, she was also the one who set order from chaos at the beginning of time, and regulated/controlled the seasons, the movements of the stars, and the actions of gods and mortals alike.

You can read the whole story of Clary and Olianthe’s first meeting in _City of Mirrors_ , ‘The White Knight is a Princess’.

If you missed the fact that Runed!Clary is neopagan, I’m afraid you have not been paying attention, my friends.

Bearnon Bride is a Scottish Gaelic name for a dandelion.

 _Mångata_ is a Swedish word for the road-like shape of moonlight on water one sees while facing the horizon.

Autognosis is defined by thefreedictionary dot com as ‘knowledge or understanding of one’s own nature, abilities, and limitations; insight into oneself’.

Plerosis is a theological term, meaning the act or process of being made full or complete.

Self-schema are the beliefs and ideas one has about oneself. Self-schism is a term I made up, with the kind of obvious meaning of a schism with or within oneself.

A nonpareil is a peerless object or person; something/someone who/which is priceless and best.

For those who are not mad myth-geeks like myself, Tam Lin is a character in a Scottish ballad; a faerie man who in most versions was once human, but taken captive by the faerie queen. Janet is a human woman who rescues him, more or less, by winning the challenge the queen sets her: Janet has to hold fast to Tam Lin while the queen turns Tam Lin into various shapes, like a snake, a black dog, and ‘a flash of fire’.

 _Aoiveons_ is an Enochian hypocorism, a term of endearment; literally, star-heart.

 _Fesharszi_ is _peace_ in demonic Enochian.

 _Brigadeiros_ are a super-yummy Brazilian dessert/treat made of cocoa powder, condensed milk, and butter, rolled in chocolate sprinkles. I heartily recommend them.

 _Ashipu-ene_ is the plural of _ashipu_ , which is what everyone but the Nephilim call warlocks.

 _Perkele_  is a Finnish swearword, analogous to shit/fuck. Literally it means ‘devil’.

 _Shemayet_ is a modern rendering of the ancient Egyptian word _s_m`yt_ , which is translated as ‘chantress’ and was the title of an extremely important priestess of each religious order.

A _zemer_ is a religious Jewish song, typically sung in Aramaic or Hebrew, analogous to a hymn.

Annwn is one of the names for the Otherworld in Celtic mythology; specifically the Welsh name for it.

 _Bibbidi bobbidi boo_ is from Disney’s Cinderella (1950). It’s the song/incantation sung by the fairy godmother when she’s making Cinderella’s ballgown.

 _Eresh_ is the Sumerian word for Queen.

 _Ahatki_ is the Sumerian word for sister.

Nirvana is literally the state of becoming one with the universe, or Brahman, in Hindu philosophy, and is the sense in which the term is used here.

 _Nanaeel_ —my power, Enochian. Used here as a term of respect or endearment.

Caos—literally ‘tangibility’ in Enochian; used as a catch-all term for the material realm of existence (as opposed to the dark place where Kashtokaz and not-Simon have been hanging out, or the realm of dreams.)


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